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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29838156">until the end and after</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philyra912/pseuds/Philyra912'>Philyra912</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Anal Sex, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Bottom Dean Winchester, Curtain Fic, Dirty Talk, Domestic, Episode Fix-It: s15e20 Carry On, First Kiss, First Time, First Time Blow Jobs, Fix-It, Getting Together, Hand Jobs, Human Castiel (Supernatural), Love Confessions, M/M, Post-Canon, Top Castiel (Supernatural), Top Castiel/Bottom Dean Winchester, of a weird and emotional and slightly blasphemous variety for which I will not apologize</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 22:00:19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>27,923</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29838156</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philyra912/pseuds/Philyra912</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A year ago, the world didn't end. Now it's summer and the cicadas are buzzing, and something is changing. Something is going to give.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>62</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>342</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>There is barely a plot here, just lots of domestic fluff that turns into extremely emotional smut in later chapters. Welcome to my post-series fix-it, in which Dean Winchester is a really good husband on accident, and Castiel is the most patient ex-angel who has ever lived.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Dean wakes up to the sound of cicadas buzzing through the open window of his bedroom, a droning chorus that has been playing like background music since the weather turned warm in the spring. He blinks at the ceiling a while, watching the way the pattern of sunlight and shadow shifts as a breeze moves the curtains, and then rolls over to squint at the old-fashioned alarm clock on the table by the bed. There is not a knife beneath his pillow when his hand slips under it as he turns, and the clock is sharing real estate with a battered, second-hand copy of <em> Mother Night </em>rather than a book of Enochian lore, but there’s still a .38 in the nightstand drawer. Some habits die harder than others. </p><p>The clock informs him that he still has 20 minutes before he needs to hit the shower, but he swings himself upright anyway. No sense in letting himself get soft now. His bad knee protests the movement in no uncertain terms, and he glares down at it like he can intimidate his own body into forgetting he’s on the wrong side of forty and has lived a life that - among many other things - has never been easy on the joints. For a minute, he sits there on the edge of the bed while the damn bugs scream in the trees outside and a truck rumbles past on the road at the edge of the property line, and contemplates the reality of living long enough to develop arthritis. Then he pushes himself up and shuffles down the hall.</p><p>The second-floor bathroom is cramped and decorated in baby-blue floral patterns that make Dean’s lip curl up in a sneer at the best of times, but certainly at 6:40 in the morning. It’s on his Endless List of Things That Need Fixing in This Fucking House to replace the ancient fixtures, plumb in a new tub that doesn’t have clawed, gold-leaf feet, and tear out the tile that’s older than he is to replace it with something that doesn’t make his eyes water, but the nature of the Endless List means he still hasn’t gotten around to it and probably won’t until the winter, when the weather gets too bad to work on the roof or the gutters or the rotten boards of the deck that he and Sam are supposed to rip up next weekend. </p><p>The water from the showerhead comes out smelling like rust and makes the 50-year-old plumbing rattle like a Gatling gun in the distance, but Dean wets his toothbrush with it anyway and stares at himself in the cloudy mirror above the sink while he waits for it to warm up. The beard he’s been growing the last few months (first out of laziness, and then out of morbid curiosity as he watched it fan out salt-and-pepper over his face, making him look like a stranger) probably needs a trim, but he thinks it can wait until next week. He studies the lines fanning out from his eyes, and thinks about the fact that he’s just a stone’s throw away from being as old as his dad was when he died, as old as he ever got to be. In Dean’s memory, John Winchester is purposeful and driven and full of a zealot’s rage at this age; Dean mostly just feels tired. </p><p>His shower is quick and perfunctory; he thinks about jacking off out of habit, but the impulse washes away like the metallic-smelling water that circles the drain. When he steps out of the tub and reaches for his towel, Miracle is sitting on the mat in front of the sink. Dean smiles at him as he scrubs the water from his hair and wraps the towel around his waist, then crouches down to run his fingers through the thick fur at the scruff of his neck. </p><p>“Hey, buddy.” Miracle pants at him happily and nudges his head against Dean’s hand, then pads along behind him as Dean makes his way back to his room. Dean dresses quickly, stepping into his coveralls and running a thumb over the name patch above his heart as he zips them up. He glances at the mirror above his dresser before he heads downstairs, studying the  way his hair is long enough now to flop over his forehead like it belongs to someone else, and wonders how long it will be until he stops expecting to see a soldier staring back at him.  With a sigh he would deny if anyone else but Miracle had been around to hear it, Dean goes in search of coffee.</p><p>The kitchen is flooded with morning light from the paneled-glass doors that lead out to the deck, and it is empty of people but full of plants; herbs crowd the sill above the sink in old tea canisters and repurposed coffee tins, and vines crawl along the walls where they spill out of an enormous pot hanging in the far corner. The coffee pot is half-full and there’s a cup left in the sink with a few grounds swimming in dregs at the bottom. Dean’s favorite mug (faded black letters reading Female Body Inspector wrapping around the sides, a chip in the handle from the time he was cleaning weapons at the bunker’s kitchen table and Jack had accidentally knocked it into the edge of an angel blade) sits on the counter like an invitation. Miracle’s food bowl is empty, and he stands above it looking at Dean with imploring eyes. </p><p>“Did he forget to feed you breakfast before he went on his run, or are you trying to con a con man?” Dean asks the dog skeptically as he pours coffee into his cup. </p><p>“Hard to blame him. You make an easy mark,” says a wry voice behind him from the doorway. </p><p>Dean’s heart does something funny in his chest; not a skipped beat, because that shit doesn’t happen in real life, but a brief stutter, like Baby’s engine when she’s trying to tell him something needs tended to. He turns with the coffee raised halfway to his lips, and takes in Cas’ sun-warmed face, the bead of sweat slipping down his neck toward the wet vee on the front of his t-shirt, the dark hair peppering his calves as they taper into his incongruous sneakers. Dean feels his lips curl up without any direction from him, like the pull of gravity. </p><p>“Mornin,’ Cas.” </p><p>“Good morning, Dean,” Cas’ eyes are warm and fond, and his hair is sticking to his neck like an oil slick, black and silver and wet against his skin. The feeling in Dean’s chest has been there too long to be alarming, but it’s still uncomfortable, like a puzzle with a few pieces shoved in wrong. Cas goes to the fridge and pulls out a bottle of water, chugging half of it down in one go, throat glinting in the sun as he swallows. </p><p>“You’re up early,” Cas comments mildly as he wipes moisture off his mouth with the back of one hand. His chest is heaving a little, his breath still labored from the 4-mile loops he likes to run around the outskirts of Lebanon before he makes his way back to the falling-down farmhouse Dean thinks he will be fixing up forever. </p><p>“The fucking cicadas,” Dean grumbles by way of explanation. The coffee tastes like water on his tongue; all his senses are occupied with the way sweat pools in the hollow between Cas’ collar bones.</p><p>Cas hums, a noncommittal noise that seems to reverberate around their kitchen. When Miracle pads across the floor to sniff at the dust on his shoes, Cas looks down at him with the kind of indulgent, adoring exasperation he used to save for Jack, when Jack was something they could keep. </p><p>“Your dog is picking up your bad habits,” Cas observes ruefully as he bends to scratch behind one floppy ear. “Gluttony. Deceit. Next thing you know, he’ll be defying minor deities and getting blasphemously attached to the car.” Miracle looks up at him like he hung the moon, and Dean feels a surge of sympathy in his chest for his own stupid mutt. “One breakfast only,” Cas orders sternly, and the dog responds with a joyful bark. </p><p>“Quit tryin’ to sully what me and Baby have,'' Dean grumbles amiably as he drains the rest of his coffee and turns to start rinsing the mugs out in the sink. “Our love is pure.”</p><p>“Your love is one step down from idolatry,” Cas argues wryly. </p><p>“Well, I reckon I’ve done worse than a little idolatry in my time. Shouldn’t keep me outta Heaven. I saved the world once, ya know.” He shuts off the water and turns, drying his hands. “‘Sides, I know the guy who works the door up there.” </p><p>“You are <em> not funny </em>, Dean.” And Cas isn’t smiling, but his eyes are. Miracle sits at his feet and gives a yip that sounds like agreement. </p><p>“Everyone’s a critic,” Dean sighs, He tosses the towel over the edge of the sink and ignores Cas’ frown, knows Cas will carefully return it to its hook as soon as Dean isn’t looking because Cas has gotten weirdly anal about the strangest things since he went native. “What are you up to today?” </p><p>“I’m volunteering at the youth center until 2.” Cas rolls his shoulders and neck, a terribly human gesture, and Dean sees the wince he tries to hide only because he’s looking so closely. </p><p>“Still giving you trouble?” Dean asks in a tone that makes it clear he already knows the answer. Cas fucked up his right shoulder last February clearing underbrush near the back of their sprawling yard, and he’d been a huge baby about not letting it heal up before getting back to work, muttering nonsense about hardiness zones and planting timetables. </p><p>“It’s fine, Dean.” Cas scowls like Dean might actually drop it, like that “wrath of God” shit didn’t stop working on him about 10 years back. </p><p>“You ain’t all Tuesday’s child anymore, Cas, you can’t zap torn ligaments away these days. Get it looked at.”</p><p>“Human medicine is barbaric.” Cas’ voice drips with disdain. </p><p>“<em>You’re </em>human, dumbass.” Dean rolls his eyes. “Barbaric’s what you’ve got.”</p><p>Cas sniffs dismissively, and Dean feels a rush of fondness for him so overwhelming it would take him out at the knees if he hadn’t had a decade or so of practice at keeping his feet when it hits him. Dean ambles over to the little table under the phone and fishes his keys out of the bowl where they drop their wallets and miscellaneous crap when they get home.</p><p>“Don’t forget,” Cas says absently as Dean turns back to face him, “Sam and Eileen will be late tonight. She has parent-teacher conferences this afternoon.”</p><p>“I didn’t forget,” Dean promises, even though he had forgotten entirely. He quietly recalibrates what time he needs to put the steaks on the grill, when he should start worrying if Cas hasn’t left a basket of mushrooms on the counter for him to saute. “Should be home by 4:30, the garage is never busy on Friday afternoons.” </p><p>“I know.” The warmth in Cas’ tone feels like fingers on his cheek. </p><p>“See you tonight.” He’s aiming for casual, but it comes out like a promise.</p><p>“Tonight,” Cas agrees, and Dean heads to the car with the echo of it in his ears. </p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>A few weeks after the world almost ended, there was a vamp hunt, and Dean took about a foot of rebar to the chest. </p><p>It hit him off center, sliding over his ribs like a line of hellfire, and Sam took out the bastard who pushed him into it about 10 seconds later, but it was a close enough call to rattle them both. Dean sat on the open trunk of the Impala afterward while Sam poured whiskey over the wound, and he watched blood and good booze pour into the dust at their feet like it was happening to someone else. </p><p>When he looked up into Sam’s face, he saw <em> terror </em> there, and Sam had stood bloody and beaten before God less than a month ago with a smile.</p><p>“Hey,” Dean murmured bracingly. “Quit your frettin.’ ‘Tis but a flesh wound. I’ve had worse in a bar fight.”</p><p>“A few inches to the left and you’d be in the ground, Dean,” Sam snapped back between gritted teeth. “If you die on me on a fucking vamp hunt, I’ll let you go ghost-side just so I can gank you myself.”</p><p>“If I die on a fuckin’ vamp hunt, I’ll let you,” Dean promised. </p><p>“That was too close.” Sam’s hands were sure and steady as he wrapped bandages around Dean’s chest, but his voice wavered. “Maybe it’s too soon for us to be out here again. Maybe we need more time.” </p><p>“No vacation days in this line of work, Sammy,” Dean reminded him wearily. “The things that go bump in the night ain’t gonna wait for us to get back on our feet.”</p><p>“I know,” Sam agreed, sounding ancient. “I know the job needs to be done. I just wish we didn’t have to be the ones who always do it.”</p><p>Dean felt words of agreement on the tip of his tongue, and was so shocked that they never made it past his lips. He had never, really, down in his bones, thought about leaving the life. If the near-death experience had set him on his heels, even the fleeting thought of walking away knocked him right on his ass. </p><p>“Let’s go home,” Dean managed finally. “I want some whiskey that I don’t have to wear, and then I want to sleep for a year.”</p><p>They drove back to the bunker in silence, and when they walked into the library, Jack was there. </p><p>“Jack.” Sam said the name like it had been punched out of him. Jack raised his hand in greeting like a fucking weirdo, and Dean’s heart felt like it was going to burst out of his chest. </p><p>“Sam. Dean. It’s good to see you.”</p><p>“What are you doing here, man?” Dean asked, walking forward and pulling him into a hug, because he might be not-quite-God now, but he was still Dean’s kid. His shoulders felt thin and fragile under his hands. “Thought you’d put this town in your rearview mirror.”</p><p>“There were a few things I needed to do, before I go for good,” Jack explained, smiling at them beatifically. “I had some changes to make, in Heaven, a few other places I needed to visit. I’m sorry it took so long for me to get back. Time . . . works differently, now.”</p><p>“Well, we’re just glad to see you, kid,” Dean assured him. “You almost missed us, though. We gotta get you a beeper or somethin,’ in case we’re out on a hunt when you get the urge to come by and do your laundry or whatever.”</p><p>“I do not do laundry,” Jack said dubiously, looking confused, and Sam laughed behind Dean’s shoulder, and Dean felt a bright surge of contentment in his bones, having most of his family in the same room again. </p><p>“So how have you been, Jack?” Sam asked as Dean eased himself down into a chair, stiff and sore. Jack frowned at him as he did so. </p><p>“You’re hurt,” Jack said softly instead of answering the question. </p><p>“All in a day’s work, buddy,” Dean reassured him. “Saving people, hunting things. You know the drill.” Jack blinked purposefully, and the throbbing pain in his ribs eased. Dean sighed. “Gotta say, I miss the mojo. Makes the job a little easier when there’s somebody around to patch us up.”</p><p>“I won’t always be here,” Jack reminded him gently, and Dean felt a muscle in his jaw work. </p><p>“Yeah, I know, kid. But we’ve been getting knocked around by the bad guys since long before we knew angels were anything but a bedtime story. We’ll get by.” Jack studied him for a moment, then closed his eyes. When he opened them, he smiled. </p><p>“You won’t have to,” Jack replied easily. “They’re gone.”</p><p>Sam went utterly still where he stood beside the table, and Dean felt the hairs on his arms stand up, like the moment before a lightning strike. </p><p>“Who’s gone?” Sam asked carefully. </p><p>“The ‘bad guys,’” Jack explained, like a friggin’ alien, the quotation marks clear in his voice. “It was an oversight, to leave them on Earth when I left. Chuck’s power . . . it was overwhelming at first. I wasn’t thinking as clearly as I can now.” </p><p>“What does that mean, Jack?” Sam’s voice sounded a little shrill in Dean’s ears, and far away, like it was coming down 20 miles of bad phone line. </p><p>“I have taken all the non-human entities from this world. They should never have been here in the first place. They made this realm out of balance, and I have restored order.” Jack must have misinterpreted the look on their faces, because he quickly reassured them. “They are at peace. Purgatory is gone, and the Empty is a place of rest for those who once would have gone there.” </p><p>“No more monsters?” Dean clarified again, his head full of nothing but white noise and his heart racing like he had a wendigo at his heels.</p><p>“No more monsters,” Jack confirmed, like he didn’t just pull the rug out from under Dean’s entire perspective on his tiny universe. Jack turned a little, so his sweet, guileless smile could beam at both of them at once. “Be at peace, Sam and Dean Winchester. You, of all the humans who have ever walked this earth, have earned it. I will see you again, when you go to your reward.” </p><p>Sam was still standing gobsmacked, silent, but Dean felt something crack open in his chest: the place where he had sealed away a very specific kind of hope so the flame of it couldn’t burn him alive. He leapt up from his chair before Jack could zap himself off to some distant plane of existence and out of their lives. </p><p>“Wait,” Dean croaked out past the choking, beating thing at the base of his throat. “If you’re still handing out miracles . . .” Jack just looked at him blandly, expectantly. Dean dug down into that newly split-open place in himself and dragged out a single world. “Cas.”</p><p>Jack’s smile turned nearly incandescent. </p><p>“I think I forgot to mention it, but that’s actually why I stopped by.” </p><p>Between one second and the next, he was gone, and Dean and Sam stood in their empty library, staring at each other, too shocked to even move. </p><p>And then, from the doorway: </p><p>“Hello, Dean.”</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Dean’s day at the garage passes the way most of his days do, now: classic rock blaring tinny and familiar from a paint-splattered boombox on the shop floor, grease and grit beneath his fingernails, the murmur of the two other employees shooting the shit and the occasional clang of metal against concrete when someone drops a wrench. It’s pleasant, uncomplicated, and Dean likes his job, is the thing. He hadn’t expected to, and sometimes when he’s feeling like an asshole for no reason whatsoever (because he might have a mortgage and a dog and a friendly acquaintance with the hippie at the farmer’s market who gives him a discount on the bizarrely expensive kombucha Cas has taken a shine to, but he’s still Dean Winchester), he feels weirdly betrayed by his own contentment with honest work. Once, he’d been the Righteous Man and the Michael Sword and the Bearer of the Mark of Cain. He’d defeated gods and monsters and evil men with a cocky grin on his face, had bled and died to save a world that didn’t know his name. He’d killed Hitler. Now, he spends his Friday afternoon showing an old lady how to check her oil after she’d driven the radiator of her ‘89 Buick dry, because she tells him in a tremulous voice that Harold had always taken care of this sort of thing and he’d passed last Easter. When he helps her into the car and sends her on her way an hour later, he feels useful, needed. He feels like he’s done something good. </p><p>It reminds him, strangely, of hunting with Sam in those early days after Dad took off, before they knew anything about angels or cosmic wars or the enormous bag of dicks Chuck turned out to be. The world they’d saved is filled with the little problems of ordinary people, and when some of those problems can be solved by Dean’s unique skill set, he puts them right. Engines don’t want to manipulate him into being a pawn on a heavenly chess board, and nothing tries to kill him, but other than those minor details, a day at the garage feels a lot like a simple salt-and-burn did, once upon a time. </p><p>Things slow down in the mid-afternoon, because Dean’s life has become predictable in ways he would have found appalling even a year ago, and he packs it in around 4:00, waving to Carlos and Dave where they’re smoking in the shade of the east wall of the shop. The Impala’s black paint radiates heat against his palms as he opens the door and slides into the driver’s seat, and he lets her carry him home. </p><p>When he pulls off the county road and onto his own property, Dean feels a sensation in his chest like taking a deep breath after being underwater too long. When he’d first bought the house, it had looked like a strong wind would tumble it into the ground, and it still has a sort of shabbiness to it that Dean’s not sure he’ll ever be able to eradicate and isn’t sure he’d want to if he could. As he rolls Baby to stop on the gravel drive, though, he isn’t really seeing the loose shingles near the edge of the roof or the half-finished siding he’s been replacing in his spare time. Instead, his eyes find the workbench where Cas’ growing collection of plant pots and seed trays and vaguely-ominous garden implements is heaped, the front porch he and Sam had restored this spring and the wicker chairs he’d gotten in trade for a tuneup of their neighbor’s tractor, the cheerful, bright-pink mailbox Eileen had given them as a housewarming present with a wicked smile on her face while Cas thanked her sincerely and Dean bit his tongue and glared daggers at her. It looks like so much more than a house that Dean is briefly too overwhelmed to get out of the car, but he pushes the moment away and heads inside. </p><p>Dean’s first stop is the kitchen to snag a beer from the fridge. Even though he’s back earlier than he’d told Cas he would be, he finds mushrooms already sliced on a plate by the stove, and enough veggies laid out on the counter to keep Sam from spewing his moral superiority about Dean’s awesome cooking all over the place and ruining everyone’s appetite. Cas himself is nowhere to be found, but the doors to the back yard stand open to let in the air, and Miracle is napping in a patch of sun on the deck. He raises his head when Dean walks over and looks vaguely hopeful, like he will have forgotten about this morning’s attempt at swindling Second Breakfast out of him, but Dean just leans down to buss his knuckles against the side of Miracle’s face, unwilling to be swayed. </p><p>Dean wanders over to the grill to lay the charcoal so he can let it heat up while he showers off the day, and as he clears the corner of the house, he spots Cas out in the yard, bent over a bed of runner beans that have been giving him some trouble despite his fanatical commitment to making sure they thrive. Dean would raise a hand in greeting if Cas were paying the slightest bit of attention, but he is so clearly devoted to his task that Dean doesn’t bother. While he goes through the motions of lighting the grill, he occasionally watches Cas out of the corner of his eye where he is murmuring to plants that have no idea he once led armies in Heaven and held a hundred million souls in his fragile, human chest and laid siege to hell itself to save a single, tarnished man.  Sometimes Dean feels small in the face of Cas’ unwavering devotion to the things he cares about, whether it’s the world or Jack or the garden he’s carefully coaxing into being along the treeline in the backyard. Dean mentally adds building some raised beds next spring to the Endless List.</p><p>He feels rather than hears Cas come up behind him, apparently having finished his conversation with the recalcitrant runner beans. Cas has been human long enough now to have picked up a lot of new habits - he snores, he leaves empty cups of tea in strange places, he mutters to himself under his breath when he’s reading in the evenings and drives Dean fucking insane - but he still moves as silently as a thing with wings, hollow-boned and never needing to touch the ground. Dean sometimes imagines him floating through the halls of the house when he isn’t looking, drifting like a leaf on the wind. </p><p>Cas’ inner arm brushes Dean’s shoulder as he reaches around him and snags Dean’s beer from the deck railing where he’d set it down. Dean turns to see him take a long swallow from the bottle, and notices the lines of tension around his mouth, the weary shadows under his eyes. There was a time when Cas never looked anything but grim and unhappy, but it’s been a long while since that was the case. </p><p>“Rough day?” Dean asks gruffly as he shuts the lid of the grill with one hand and plucks his beer from Cas’ fingers with the other. Cas briefly makes a bitchy, annoyed face about the beer, but Dean counts that as a win because pissy is much better than sad. The expression fades quickly though, and Cas scrubs a hand over his eyes and looks like exactly what he is: a weary man showing his years, old around the eyes and tired.</p><p>“Long day,” Cas corrects. “The oldest Connelly boy turned up at the center again this afternoon. Last month, he had two broken fingers. Today, half his face was beaten bloody.” Dean’s brain supplies a mental picture of the Connellys, who live outside the town proper on the other side of Lebanon: the mother (a slip of a woman with colorless hair and scared eyes), 3 or 4 kids with dirty faces, and Hank, an angry drunk with fists the size of hams who sneers at Dean and Cas when they walk past him in the supermarket. </p><p>“His old man?” Dean guesses. Cas slants a glance of confirmation at him, and Dean passes the beer back to him to give his hands something to do instead of curl into fists. “What’s the kid say?”</p><p>“Nothing,” Cas replies grimly as he lifts the bottle back to his lips. “But the director called CPS anyway. I guess we’ll see.”</p><p>“Think they’ll take the kids?” Dean asks. His mind tries to land on a memory of being curled up in bed at Sonny’s, lonely and scared and terribly, horribly relieved, and then skitters away. Cas hums an indeterminate noise. </p><p>“My understanding is that local sentiment leans to keeping families together unless they find objective evidence of abuse. I imagine it will depend on if they can get the children to talk.”</p><p>Dean mulls it over in his head for a bit while Cas takes another pull off the bottle, leaning back against the railing beside him. </p><p>“Family’s important,” Dean agrees finally. “But when a man becomes the thing his kids fear  instead of the thing that keeps them safe, he ain’t family. He’s a monster. And kids shouldn’t have to be afraid of monsters anymore.” Cas looks at him like he’s said something entirely unexpected, like he hasn’t known Dean down to his molecular structure for more than a decade. Dean squirms under the scrutiny. </p><p>“What? That so surprising?”</p><p>“No,” Cas responds after a beat. “Your capacity for compassion is the least surprising thing about you.” Dean lets himself look back at him for a while, taking in the way the furrow between his brow has begun to ease. </p><p>“We’re civilians now, and even if we weren’t, we’ve never been the kind of assholes who go around knocking human heads together unprovoked, just because we think they deserve it.” Cas tilts his head in acknowledgement, waiting to see what Dean will say next. “But keep an eye on the kid. If the staties don’t do their jobs, Hank Connelly’s always lurking around one dive or another on Saturday nights. We’ll go into town, get a drink, raise a little hell. Been a while since I started a bar fight, but I ain’t above doing it again if it means puttin’ the fear of God into a guy who’d break his kid’s fingers.” He smiles a little at Cas, just to see his mouth tip up at the corners in return. “Hank’s big and mean, but he’s got that glass-jaw look about him. Bullies always do.”</p><p>They stand there in companionable silence a while longer while Cas polishes off the last of the beer. Eventually, Dean pushes away from the railing to head to the house, and Cas follows him without comment, the empty beer bottle dangling from his fingers. </p><p>“Imma hit the shower before I start on the steaks,” Dean says as they cross into the kitchen. Cas goes to the sink to wash the garden soil from his hands and nods in acknowledgement. </p><p>“Anything I can do?” Cas calls after him as he mounts the stairs. Dean pauses and looks back into the kitchen at Cas’ lean silhouette backlit by the open doors. There is something peaceful and enormously terrifying about the sight of him in the house they share, with dirt on the knees of his jeans and the lines of tension soothed from his face after talking about his day while they shared a beer. Dean is aware of a pressure building up at the base of his skull. Something is shifting, he thinks. Something is going to give.</p><p>“Mushrooms and salad?” Dean suggests. Cas smiles at him, and Dean flees upstairs, like he can outrun the feeling that blooms in his chest like a flower in the sun.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Dean makes it back downstairs, freshly showered and back in the jeans and layered flannel that will always feel like a second skin, Sam and Eileen are already there. Sam is standing at the sink washing veggies that Dean knows don’t really need it because they came from their own garden, and Cas would rather suffer pain of death (again) than use pesticides. He and Cas are laughing about something while Cas sautes mushrooms at the stove, and Eileen is watching them from the kitchen table with a small smile on her face, one hand on Miracle’s head where he sits at her feet, the other resting gently on the swell of her belly. Dean’s chest feels full of light and warm air. </p><p>“What happened to parent-teacher conferences?” he asks once he’s in Eileen’s line of sight. She grins up at him, and the slim band on her left ring finger glints in the afternoon light as she raises her hands to answer. </p><p>“My last one was a no-show,” she tells him in ASL and English. Dean’s signing is never going to be as good as Sam’s, and even Sam will never be able to follow Cas and Eileen when they start having silent, rapid-fire discussions about Beat Poets and invasive plant species and their mutual antipathy toward the woman who runs the honey stall at the farmer’s market, but she never seems to grow impatient with forming each sign slowly and clearly as she speaks while Dean follows her fingers like they’re sigils in a lore book he can memorize if he tries hard enough. “People are people all over, and no one likes to have serious conversations on a Friday when the sun is out.”</p><p>“Amen to that,” Dean agrees fervently, bussing his knuckles against Eileen’s cheek affectionately as he walks further into the room. He clasps a hand to Sam’s shoulder as he passes behind him to get to the fridge. </p><p>“Hey Sammy. What the hell are you drowning that lettuce for? You know the only thing Cas uses to keep the bugs away is threats of violence and that one really bitchy face he makes.” He looks over to see Cas shoot an unamused glance over his shoulder at him. “That’s the one.” </p><p>“Dirt exists, Dean,” Sam huffs indignantly as he moves on to running cucumbers under the water from the tap. “I can take your salad out back and kick it around the yard a little before we eat, if you prefer the authentic experience.” </p><p>“Like Imma be eating your rabbit food when there’s red meat to be had,” Dean replies as he pulls the plate of steaks and a beer out of the fridge. </p><p>“You’ll eat it,” Cas warns without taking his eyes away from the stove. “Or I’ll call Doctor Halliday and ask him about the results of the cholesterol test you had last month and then refused to talk about.” </p><p>“Excuse you,” Dean splutters. “First of all, HIPPA and all that shit. Second of all, what happened to barbaric human medicine?”</p><p>“I’m your emergency medical contact,” Cas points out serenely, “and barbarism has its uses.” Dean looks back to see Sam and Eileen watching them, trying not to smile. </p><p>“You’re all uninvited from dinner,” Dean announces, feeling aggrieved. “I’ll be out at the grill cooking awesome food that I will not be sharing.” He pauses, reconsiders. “Miracle can have some if he toes the line.” </p><p>Miracle barks from the floor beside Eileen, wagging his tail ecstatically.</p><p>“If you feed that dog the steaks you insisted we had to drive two towns over to buy, your arteries will be the least of your worries, Dean Winchester,” Cas threatens evenly. Dean goes out the open doors to the back deck with as much dignity as he can muster, with Sam and Eileen’s laughter following him out on the breeze.</p><p>He’s been zenned out over the grill, sipping his beer and thinking about nothing, for about 5 minutes before Sam wanders out after him, his own beer in hand. He folds his long limbs in on himself so he can sit on the steps that lead down into the lawn, wincing when a board creaks ominously under his weight. </p><p>“It’s a damn miracle this deck hasn’t collapsed and dumped one of your asses into the dirt, Dean,” Sam says blandly. Dean grunts in acknowledgment, but feels a well of protectiveness surge up in his belly for the ramshackle house and all the pieces of her.</p><p>“This old heap has good bones,” Dean argues loyally. “She’ll hold together ‘til we can set her right next Saturday. She’s held this long.”</p><p>Sam hums and takes another sip of beer. Dean wonders what he sees, looking out into the back half of the property, where Dean has boards and siding stacked along the side of the ancient shell of a barn they haven’t gotten around to patching up yet, where Cas’ garden blooms in the warm light of almost-sunset. </p><p>“How’s the library?” Dean asks before he can get too squirrelly about his brother’s opinion of the life lying scattered across the lawn. A few forged degrees and Sam’s incredibly nerdy and embarrassing enthusiasm for archiving had landed him a job at the Lebanon branch of the Kansas Public Library last August, and he seems impossibly, improbably happy there, puttering around amongst the paperbacks, showing 10-year-olds how to use search engines for good and not for evil. </p><p>“Same as always,” Sam says, sounding pleased about it. “I’m presenting to the board next month, trying to get them to cough up the funding to upgrade the computer lab.” </p><p>“You’ll get it,” Dean declares with confidence. He shuts the lid of the grill to let it do itss own thing for a few minutes, and settles down beside Sam on the steps with his own beer sweating into his hand. “You’re the most stubborn son-of-a-bitch I ever met, Sammy, and you never lost an argument even before all that schoolin’ you got under your belt. The board will be begging to give you the whole damn building before you’re through with ‘em.” </p><p>Sam smiles, and he looks ten years younger, glowing under his big brother’s praise. A few minutes pass in companionable silence, and then Sam slants a sideways glance at him. Dean feels his spidey-sense tingle, the way it used to right before one of them did something incredibly stupid and sent all their well-laid plans right out the window. </p><p>“So,” Sam begins, too casual. “Met any nice emergency contacts lately?” Dean very manfully doesn’t spit his mouthful of beer across the grass, but it’s a close thing. </p><p>“Now what the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Dean demands when he’s no longer afraid he’ll choke on it. Sam shrugs like he hasn’t said anything remarkable, because Sam is a little shit. </p><p>“Nothing,” he protests mildly. “It’s a thing people ask. You know, steaks on the grill, beer on the deck, talking about work, asking about your brother’s love life. Normal shit.”</p><p>“We have never been <em> normal </em>, Sam,” Dean growls, but it doesn’t sound convincing even to his own ears. Sam laughs, and it is such an uncomplicated sound, none of the weariness or bitterness that used to tinge every laugh Dean used to manage to eek out of him. </p><p>“Look around you, Dean,” Sam says, mirth in every line of his face. “We’re having Friday night dinner, like we do every week. We have 9-5’s and pay taxes and my wife is in there, petting your dog and talking about bees with your . . . with Cas.” Dean bristles at the pause, the brief correction, but Sam continues before he can do anything about it. “If this isn’t normal, what do you call it?”</p><p>Dean has a moment of weird, ringing clarity, like his head is a bell that has just been struck. <em> Normal </em> . Not a vacation, or a pause, or a long breath taken before the next apocalypse comes down on their heads; just a normal life, stretching out in front of them like a curving road, paved smooth enough to be easy on Baby’s wheels. He had known it, of course, but he thinks it might be the first time he’s <em> felt </em> it, sitting in his own backyard, sharing a beer with his brother. </p><p>“I . . .” Dean clears his throat and takes a long pull from his beer to wet his suddenly dry tongue. “Fine, whatever, dude. We’re the goddamn Cleavers, yay for us.” Sam’s grin looks entirely too smug. “But that ‘emergency contact’ crap. What exactly were you trying to say?”</p><p>The smile slides from Sam’s face like water, and he looks vaguely surprised. </p><p>“Dean . . . You can’t tell me you don’t know, man.”</p><p>And Dean does know, is the thing. He knows how it looks, to Cas’ friends from the youth center and the guys at the garage, to the woman at the post-office who asks after Dean’s “young man” when he goes in to clear out their PO box, to strangers at the garden center who see Cas walking the aisles like a man on a pilgrimage while Dean pushes a cart along behind him in long-suffering silence. But Sam . . . Sam knows better, and him bringing it up like this feels uncharacteristically cruel considering how much of his life Sam has spent trying to be the kindness the world has never shown them. </p><p>“You know it ain’t like that, Sammy,” Dean says tiredly. </p><p>“Why not?” Sam asks it so simply, like there could possibly be an answer to that question that Dean could begin to articulate in the next 10 years, let alone before the steaks are done. “Why can’t it be like that? Chuck’s gone, Dean. There’s no one pulling our strings anymore. You and Cas . . . your choices are your own. Your life is whatever you make it.” </p><p>“It ain’t like that because it <em> isn’t </em>,” Dean snaps. “And my life is fine.”</p><p>“Your life is <em> happy </em>,” Sam corrects, and the beer tastes like ashes in Dean’s mouth. Sam turns to study him for a minute. “Please tell me this isn’t some 7th inning sexuality crisis, because I know we’re out of training, but I’m bigger than you and I can still kick your ass.” </p><p>“You can try,” Dean argues like a muscle memory, but his mind is somewhere else entirely. He is suddenly back in a shithole motel in 2009, the first time he’d looked at Cas and and thought about grabbing the lapels of that fuck-ugly trench coat, shoving him back against the little plexiglass “in case of emergency” sign next to the door, and cutting off whatever biting words he’d been about to say with his tongue in Cas’ mouth. </p><p>At the time, Dean knew he should have been more alarmed by the “wavelength of heavenly intent who had watched the antecedents of humanity slither from the primordial ooze” aspect of this new development, but his brain kept snagging on the dude suit that heavenly intent was walking around in, all stubble and hard angles and a voice like gravel crunching under Baby’s wheels. He’d thought about all the women he’d taken to bed, how much he’d loved the smooth give of their thighs, how they all smelled like musk and citrus beneath the cheap perfume and the way that scent distilled between their breasts and legs, the slim fragility of their small hands in his, the way their hair spilled through his fingers like colored water. He’d thought about men in dive bars and pool halls and truck stops who looked at him with cruel and avaricious eyes and mumbled things about his whore’s mouth that felt like whip lashes in his ears. He’d thought about standing over the burning bones of two nuns on his 17th birthday whose love had put them in ground, whose pain had trapped them in a world that had loathed and rejected them. </p><p>He’d thought about his father. And then he’d put it away. </p><p>A lot of water had passed under the bridge since then, though, and Dean at 31 was a different man than Dean on the far side of 40. If that were the only problem, the only thing standing between him and the picture Sam is painting, Dean’s pretty sure they’d be having a very different conversation right now. </p><p>“Cas and I are doing all right, Sammy,” Dean says finally. “We got a good thing goin’ here. Leave it, ok?”</p><p>“Yeah, ok, Dean,” Sam replies eventually. His beer is empty now, and he stands up, brushing off his jeans as he goes and then setting one giangator hand down on Dean’s shoulder with infinite gentleness. “Just because something’s good doesn’t mean it can’t be better. Think about it, all right?”</p><p>Dean sits on the steps of the deck until the steaks are ready to be turned over, and he does.</p><hr/><p>After Cas came back, things were . . . weird, for a while. </p><p>Living with Cas, all human and grouchy and prone to terrible habits like leaving his damp towels on Dean’s clean bathroom floor to mildew, was sort of like living with a ticking bomb. Dean tiptoed around the bunker, feeling like he was one wrong step away from setting the whole thing off. </p><p>Cas was, bizarrely, exactly the way Dean remembered him before the world had almost ended. He wasn’t wide-eyed and perplexed by the kitchen appliances, the way he had been during his earlier flirtations with going native, and he didn’t walk around mooning after Dean like a love-sick idiot, the way Dean had been sort of afraid he would after the epic, death’s-door confession in the basement. He stayed up too late pouring over books in dead languages in the library, and took the last cup of coffee in the morning without making more, and he bitched at Dean when he drank too much or screwed with the archiving system Cas and Sam had been using to sort through the bunker’s endless collection of arcane junk. He was just Cas, minus the wings and with a new predisposition for bedhead and buying dying plants from the clearance section at Lowe’s. Dean kept waiting for Cas to bare his brand new, shiny soul to him and continue the conversation they never actually got to finish that day, but he never did. It was frankly disconcerting. </p><p>Worse than trying to figure out how to exist around Cas after knowing he’d thrown himself down on the sword of how he felt about Dean and managed to beat Death at her own game, though, was trying to figure out what the fuck any of them were supposed to do now. For a couple weeks after Jack’s last miracle before the credits rolled, they scoured the web and called up every person they’d ever met who knew what to look out for, but it was really just due diligence. Dean had known the second Jack had sent them that pleased, gentle smile that the war they’d been fighting their whole lives was over, for real this time. </p><p>Some time passed. They started spending less time in the library mulling over weird news articles, and when Dean made phone calls, it was usually just to check in with Jody on how the girls were doing or to let Bobby grunt monosyllables at him down the line. One evening, and Dean wasn’t even sure which one, Sam shut his laptop on the email account they used to field their Google alerts for “exsanguinated” and “unexplained death,” and as far as he knew, never opened it again. </p><p>Dean started spending a lot of time in the bowels of the bunker, giving Baby the kind of thorough once-over she didn’t get enough of when various apocalypses were dividing his attention. Cas occupied his afternoons at the animal shelter, at the free clinic in town, at the youth center that had gone up last year, and his mornings coaxing his reject houseplants back from the brink of death in the conservatory that had previously been home to half a century of dust and the memory of green, growing things. Sam made unconvincing noises about going back to school, like his heart wasn’t in it but he thought he was supposed to, and then, one day, Eileen showed up. </p><p>Jack’s reverse-Thanos-snap had set her down right where she’d been when she got dusted, and she and Sam had gone back to their long-distance, text-based pining. It had gotten so ridiculous that Dean had actually tried to <em> talk </em> to Sam about it, and had been shut down in no uncertain terms. So, the day Dean pulled up to the bunker after a run to the auto supply store and found the little hatchback parked out front, with Eileen leaning against the passenger side and staring at the bunker’s door like it might reveal its secrets under intense interrogation, he wasn’t exactly sure what to think. </p><p>He pulled the Impala up behind her car, got out, and went to join her. She glanced over at him when he eased his shoulder against hers, and offered him a wan smile. </p><p>“Hey, gorgeous,” Dean said easily once she was looking at his face. “You waitin’ for an engraved invitation or something?”</p><p>“Tell me this is a bad idea,” she said softly, almost pleading. “Tell me I can’t pack up my whole life and move into a secret lair with the three guys who saved the world, because that is something a crazy person would do.”</p><p>“We aren’t letting people tell us what to do anymore,” Dean replied eventually. “That was sort of the point of the whole savin’ the world thing. And as far as crazy people go . . . that’s a blind-leading-the-blind situation if I ever heard one.” The look she shot him was full of mirth and only a little uncertainty. Dean thought about everything he’d done for Sam, how he’d fought and bled and died to keep him whole and sane and here, and for what? For this, Dean realized. For exactly this, and if there was one more thing he could do for the kid, it was to try to make sure he got it. </p><p>“Look, my brother is a huge nerd and a pain in the ass, but he’s the best man I know. You could make him happy, and he deserves it. But he could make you happy too. I think he wants to, if you’ll let him.” </p><p>Eileen’s smile was brittle and beautiful and unafraid. Dean thought Sam had lucked out with her in a lot of ways, but that thread of bravery that ran like iron through her bones might be his favorite thing about her. Dean wrapped an arm around her thin shoulders and pressed a kiss to the top of her hair. He let her go far enough that she could see his lips again, but didn’t move his arm away.</p><p>“Now c’mon, it’s Friday night and I’ve got chili on the stove. You don’t want to miss out on my cooking. I’m like, awesome at it.” </p><p>“And so modest, too,” Eileen commented wryly, and allowed herself to be steered into the bunker, Dean’s arm around her like an anchor. </p><hr/><p>Dean returns to the house with the four steaks he cooked to absolute perfection, and finds Sam setting out plates and cutlery while Cas and Eileen sign so quickly to each other that their hands are a blur between them. Sam watches Dean’s face like he’s expecting Dean to yell at him, maybe, or avoid him entirely, but Dean just looks back at him placidly. He nods his head in the direction of the silent conversation happening at the table. </p><p>“What’s all that about?” Dean asks as he moves a steak onto the plate in front of Cas and is completely ignored for his trouble. </p><p>“Something about colony collapse disorder,” Sam says cheerfully, with the patience of a man comfortable with his place in the world. “I can’t really follow. Reckon they’ll tell us if there’s something we need to know.” </p><p>“Melittology will be the next salvation of this planet, Sam,” Cas says sternly, his hands finally slowing as he and Eileen turn their attention to the food on the table. “You should know <em> everything </em> about it.” Sam looks properly chastised, and Dean grins at him. </p><p>“Well, that’s you told.” He always enjoys seeing Cas’ acerbic disapproval aimed at someone else. He transfers the last steak to Eileen’s plate and gives her an apologetic smile when she looks up at him mournfully. “Sorry gorgeous, only well-done for you until Dean Jr. is topside. Precious cargo.”</p><p>“As if a little rare meat could put a dent in a Winchester,” Eileen grouses, but runs a hand over her belly protectively. </p><p>“And we are not naming our child Dean Jr.” Sam protests for what might be the fiftieth time. </p><p>“Yeah, you’re right,” Dean agrees easily, sliding into his seat. There’s a fresh beer sitting by his plate, and Dean shoots a glance  of thanks in Cas’ direction. “Too much for the little dude to live up to. Might give him a complex.” Sam rolls his eyes and Eileen grins, and Cas’ gaze across the table is infinitely fond. </p><p>Dinner passes in amiable conversation, the way it does every week. Eileen talks about a new student who lost his hearing to meningitis at 14 and is acting out because <em> duh </em>, and how one of her other kids got him to laugh for the first time this week. Sam tells a frankly hilarious story about a sweet, church-going old lady who is burning through explicit romance novels so fast he’s having to request additional titles from other branches, his ears turning bright red in mortification as the rest of them laugh their asses off. Cas talks about his ailing runner beans for so long Dean’s eyes start to glaze over, and does not mention the boy from the youth center at all. Beneath the table, Dean slips scraps to Miracle and even though Cas never actually catches him at it, Dean’s pretty sure he knows. </p><p>When their plates are clean and everyone is drowsy and well-fed, Dean dumps the dishes in the sink to be dealt with later and they decamp to the living room. Eileen nurses a cup of tea while the rest of them linger over their beers, and Dean listens to the sounds of their voices mingling and watches Cas out of his peripheral vision. </p><p>“I like this room,” Eileen says eventually, and Dean tunes back into the conversation, glancing around, trying to see it with fresh eyes. The wallpaper is peeling in one corner, and they need to get the fireplace cleaned out before the weather turns cold this year, but there are plants on tables under every window and books crowding the shelves. One of the dog's half-chewed bones is lying on the floor by the hearth, and a discarded newspaper with the crossword finished in Cas’ neat penmanship is folded open on the coffee table. It looks like what it is: a place where boring, regular lives are lived. Like a miracle. </p><p>“It’s a good room.” It takes Dean a minute to realize he wasn’t the one who said it. Cas is studying the ceiling with a small smile on his face, looking tired and content and like he can’t imagine anything better than this shabby house in the middle of nowhere, Kansas, and Dean feels something crack in his chest: the first warning creak of a dam about to break. He thinks: “Maybe. Maybe we could.” And then he thinks: “what the fuck what the fuck what the <em> fuck </em>.” </p><p>“Yeah,” Dean croaks around the sudden constriction in his throat. “Who wants pie?”</p><p>Dean moves through the kitchen entirely on autopilot, collecting forks and plates and the strawberry-rhubarb pie he’d baked yesterday after work, while his brain makes a noise like a busted engine trying to turn over. He can’t tell if Sam’s come-to-Jesus talk got into his head or if he’s losing his fucking mind, but after a minute of blind panic, he remembers the look on Cas’ face as he agreed with Eileen that their dimly-lit, unimpressive living room was <em> good </em>, and realizes it’s neither of those things. It’s Cas, former angel of the lord, sitting with Dean’s brother and sister-in-law in the other room, seeing beauty in the little, ordinary life Dean has been building up around them. </p><p>Dean stands in his empty kitchen, takes a breath, and decides. </p><p>“Yeah,” he tells the pie in his hands. “Yeah, ok.”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>For the next hour, while the rest of them eat pie and talk about mundane things, Dean sits with the decision he made in the kitchen. He turns it over and over in his head like a rosary, trying to find any crack, any part of it that feels flawed or wrong or unholy. He can’t, and the feeling of it settles in his chest: a choice, a real one, finally made. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Eventually, Eileen is yawning behind her hand and Sam starts making noises about heading home. Dean waits to feel apprehension or something like it, some urge to delay the inevitable, but it never comes. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>At the door, Cas and Eileen have a quick, silent conversation and Dean watches them over Sam’s shoulder while giving him a bracing hug. Cas’ whole face is smiling, and there’s that lurch behind his breastbone, warm but a little painful. It’s terribly familiar, that feeling. It’s the same way he’s felt when he looked at Cas pretty much since forever. He feels a little stupid for not realizing the name for it before he was standing in their kitchen tonight, holding a pie and having an epiphany. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s shaken out of his reverie by Sam pulling back and holding him by the shoulders, searching his face. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You ok, Dean?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dean doesn’t think “ok” is exactly the right word to describe what he is right now: terrified, certain, full of a buzzing, bright-white light that feels too small to fit inside his skin. “Ok” doesn’t begin to encompass those things, but he’s not going to say that to Sam while Cas and Eileen make plans to meet at the coffee shop on Wednesday afternoon (probably to bitch about Dean and Sam) and say their goodbyes 4 feet away. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, Sammy,” Dean says, and tries to reassure his baby brother by letting some of his calm certainty show on his face. “I’m better than ok.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You are, aren’t you?” Sam’s eyes are entirely too perceptive as they track over Dean’s face, and Dean is forced to give him a less-than-gentle shove toward the door to throw him off the scent. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, yeah. Get out of my house,” Dean grumbles. “It’s past your curfew.”</span>
  <span></span>
    <br/>
  
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“Jerk,” Sam mumbles affectionately. He gives Cas a companionable clasp on the shoulder before heading out to start the car. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Bitch,” Dean calls after him. He turns to Eileen, who is smiling up at him with her dark, knowing eyes. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You sure you want to bring another Sam into the world? Seems like you’d have enough on your plate, keeping the original model in line.” He presses a kiss to her cheek before tugging her close to his chest. She smells like honeysuckle and wood fires, and when she pulls back, she grins up at him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Dean Jr. is going to be half me, you know,” she replies amiably. “I think we’ll hold our own.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You are my favorite sister-in-law,” Dean promises her fervently. She gives him a friendly punch to the shoulder with just enough wallop to remind him that she could probably kick his ass if she needed to. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’d better be. See you next Friday.” Cas walks her out to the car solicitously, and Dean watches them from the porch of the house. </span>
  <em>
    <span>His</span>
  </em>
  <span> house, he thinks, his and Cas.’ The house where Dean has heaped up the rubble of all the things that have happened to them and made a life, a life that Cas called “good” without a hint of regret or hesitation. Another brick is laid in the foundation of certainty Dean can feel deep beneath his ribs. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Cas returns to stand beside Dean, and they watch Sam and Eileen’s car disappear onto the county road at the edge of the property. When their headlights are out of sight, Cas turns his face to Dean, like a flower to the sun, and Dean feels his mouth turn up in a smile he has no control over whatsoever. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Dishes?” Dean suggests, and Cas sighs. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes, we should. Sometimes mortal existence is so </span>
  <em>
    <span>annoying</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Them’s the breaks, dude,” Dean reminds him cheerfully, and follows him into the house. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They take their usual places in front of the sink: Dean washes, Cas rinses, dries, and puts away. Dean can’t remember them ever having a conversation about it, but it’s how they’ve always done it. The embers in Dean’s chest glow a little brighter as he thinks about it, that they’ve done something as mundane as dishes long enough to have always done it a certain way. They work in silence, and at some point Miracle pads in to sniff around their feet before settling on his bed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>As the pile of dirty plates and used pans begins to dwindle under his hands, Dean becomes aware of that sense of calm clarity he used to get right before a fight: the groundwork laid, the decisions done. All that’s left is to actually </span>
  <em>
    <span>do it</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and that part Dean has always been good at. He takes a long, steadying breath, and then makes his choice. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So, we ever gonna talk about it, Cas?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dean once stood broken and bloody and weaponless before God Himself, and this is still the bravest thing he has ever done. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Cas goes still. Not eerily still, like he used to when he was all juiced-up and inhuman, but still like a cornered animal, muscles frozen and pulse leaping in the vein beneath his jaw. He doesn’t ask what Dean means, and doesn’t plead ignorance. He simply takes a long, deep breath. The tension leaves his body all at once, a deliberate choice, and he goes back to drying dishes with his hands trembling just enough to be visible. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Do you want to talk about it?” Cas asks evenly. There is no inflection in his voice, like he is afraid of spooking one or both of them by even suggesting he has feelings about the answer.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Think we’d better,” Dean says, easy and unafraid.  “Think we probably should’ve done it a long time ago, but there’s nothing to be done about that now.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“All right,” Cas agrees, and for the first time since the day he stood in the basement of the bunker in an impossible situation and found a way to stop the world from ending, he sounds unsure. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dean finishes scrubbing the last of the pans and passes it over to Cas to rinse and dry, and while Cas keeps his eyes resolutely forward, Dean leans back against the counter edge and watches him work. He has spent the last decade and change feeling like Cas had him at some kind of disadvantage in every conversation they ever had; that Cas had faith when Dean doubted, that Cas was certain when Dean was lost, that Cas </span>
  <em>
    <span>knew</span>
  </em>
  <span> when Dean could not even begin to guess. It’s odd to be on the other side of it now, to know exactly what he wants to say, to be almost sure how it will go. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Cas lingers over the last few steps of his chore, turning off the faucet like it might break off in his hand if he isn’t careful, meticulously folding the dish towel and returning it to the hook Dean had screwed in above the backsplash under protest. He finally turns to meet Dean’s eyes, looking like he’s going to his execution, and Dean gives him the softest smile he can and tilts his head toward the hall. Cas follows him out without comment, and Miracle is so deeply asleep in his bed by the door that he doesn’t even raise his head when they pass by. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dean leads them out onto the front porch and settles himself down into the low, wide, cushioned bench he’d found at the Goodwill last year, where he likes to take naps on Sunday afternoons when the heat is too bad to work on the house. Cas hesitates for only a moment, briefly considering one of the wicker chairs set to either side before sitting down directly beside him, not even attempting to put some distance between himself and the blow he thinks is coming. He has always been the bravest of them, when it counted. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dean lets the silence settle for a while, looking out across the sloping expanse of their front yard beneath the stars, giving him some space. Even now, there is no discomfort between them, no awkwardness or sense that either of them wants to be anywhere else. Being with Cas is so simple, like breathing, and Dean has been an idiot not to realize what that means before today. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“When Jack gave you back to us,” Dean says finally, “I spent a whole month feeling like I was holding my breath, waiting for you to bring up what happened in that basement. But you never did, Cas.” There’s a beat of silence.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Why</span>
  </em>
  <span>?” It’s the one part of this Dean has never been able to figure out. “I thought at first that you regretted it, but that ain’t it, is it?” It’s not really a question.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I will never be sorry for the way I feel about you,” Cas replies carefully.  “Of all the things I have ever done, it is the thing of which I am least ashamed. But I would never have burdened you with the knowledge of it, Dean, if there had been any other way.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Dammit, Cas, you are not a </span>
  <em>
    <span>burden</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” Dean knows his voice sounds so fierce it has crossed the line over into furious, and he rubs a hand over his face. “You really were always meant to be one of us, weren’t you? You’re that special Winchester brand of fucked-up, the kind where you can’t let other people care about you without bogging it down in about 15 different kinds of guilt.” Cas huffs out a laugh that sounds like a sob. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, I learned from the best,” Cas says ruefully. He clears his throat and swallows hard. “When I say I wanted to spare you, I mean exactly that. Not spare us both the awkwardness or myself the guilt of an unwelcome confession. I wanted to spare you the pain.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What pain?” Dean asks a little incredulously.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The pain you feel when you can’t be all the things you think someone needs. My feelings may have set me free, but knowing about them would have been a cage for you. You would have beaten yourself bloody against the bars of it, knowing there were things I wanted from you that you couldn’t give.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dean thinks on that for a moment, listening to the cicadas drone from the fields around them, and the really heartbreaking thing about it is: Cas is sort of right. It </span>
  <em>
    <span>has</span>
  </em>
  <span> been tearing him up inside, watching Cas love him quietly, without hope or agenda, thinking about him going without for </span>
  <em>
    <span>years</span>
  </em>
  <span> before Dean even knew there was something he wasn’t getting, feeling like a failure for not being what he needs. But Dean thinks he knows, now, the thing they’ve both been getting wrong. He even thinks he might know how to set it right. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Not sure that was your call to make, Cas,” he says finally. “We can’t spare each other pain all the time, no matter how much we want to. If you want to keep secrets for their own sake, you’re allowed. You don’t owe me all the pieces of you; keepin’ some just for yourself is part of being human. But, with something like this . . .” Dean pauses, trying to find the right words to personify the desperate yearning he feels to make himself understood. “We’ve been hurtin’ together a long time now, and I’d rather have the pain of knowing you than the peace of not knowing I don’t.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>After a long beat, Cas speaks again. “Do you know what I miss most, about being an angel?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Besides completely derailing Dean’s ability to follow the very serious conversation they’re having, that’s pretty much the worst thing he could have said, because thinking about Cas missing things, regretting his choice to let Jack clip his wings and set him back down on the world, is the kind of thing that would drive Dean to the bottom of a bottle of bourbon if he let himself go there. But Dean’s the one who upended the boat of their tacit silence on the subject of “shit we never talk about but probably should” and dumped them into this lake of sharing their feelings or whatever, so he can’t exactly shut it down now. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hearing your prayers.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dean blinks at him, totally thrown. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You hear me talk every day. Some days, I’m the</span>
  <em>
    <span> only </span>
  </em>
  <span>person you talk to, and half the time you’re telling me to shut my cake hole. You can’t possibly want to hear more of my voice than you already have to.” Cas smiles at him indulgently. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I never grow tired of hearing your voice. But prayer isn’t a phone call, Dean. It is thought and feeling and faith freely given, and it is always honest. I miss it, knowing what you’re really thinking. I miss hearing the sound of your soul in my head.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What’s my soul sound like?” Dean asks through the sudden dryness of his mouth, genuinely curious. Cas’ eyes go somewhere far away, </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Like the Impala’s engine in the middle of the night on an empty highway, with Sam asleep against the passenger door. Like the lapping of water against the dock in your most merciful dreams. Like Jimmy Page on the guitar and the cocking of your favorite gun, and the song Mary used to sing to you when she put you to bed.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dean’s mind tries to counter those things with the screams of souls on the rack under his knife, the drip of the leaky faucet in the bathroom where Charlie died, the slam of the door on the night Sam left for Stanford, but he can’t really hear them over the rushing-water sound of his gratitude that none of that shit got prayer-whammied into Cas’ head. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, I think my prayin’ days are done, Cas. You were the only one who ever answered ‘em, anyway. But if you want to know what I’m really thinking, I can tell you.” There is a beat of silence, and Dean feels an unbearable pressure to give him an out. “Don’t know why anyone would want to know about it, ‘s all fucked-up in here,” Cas’ face creases into a frown, and Dean finishes, more softly, “but I could tell you, if you asked.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Cas stares at him sedately for a while, and something shifts behind his eyes. Dean feels his heart rate kick into a higher gear, because he knows that look. That’s how Cas looks when he believes him, believes </span>
  <em>
    <span>in </span>
  </em>
  <span>him. It’s Dean’s favorite expression. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You said you wanted to know why I never brought it up, after Jack returned me to Earth.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Because you didn’t want to twist the knife you thought you’d put in my chest by bein’ honest, because you’re an idiot,” Dean suggests bitterly, still a little pissed off about it, and a little more pissed off about him being kinda right. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Because I didn’t want to twist the knife,” Cas agrees softly, too sincere. “What I want to know is: why are you bringing it up at all?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dean watches Cas for a long minute, sorting out what he wants to say in his head, and then turns his face away. He’s brave enough to say it, he thinks, but not quite brave enough to look at Cas while he does, and that will just have to do. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“While we were tangling with Billie in that basement, Chuck was zapping everybody else, all 7.8 billion minus 3, off the map, and I let Sam spend two hours thinking I was dead.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What.” Cas’ voice is totally without inflection, just a blank slate of a word, because while he already knew about the non-Winchester part of the population going up in smoke, he didn’t know about the rest of it. No one does. Dean hasn’t breathed a word of it since deciding to get up off the floor. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I sat against the wall, right where you threw me down, and let my phone ring, over and over, ‘til the battery gave out. I knew it was Sam, knew what he’d think if I didn’t answer, but I couldn’t do it, Cas. I couldn’t tell him you were gone, even if it meant letting him know I wasn’t.” Cas makes a wounded noise to his left, and Dean is glad he isn’t looking at him for that one. He doesn’t want to know what Cas looks like when he sounds like that. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I hate that I caused you more grief. I know what it means to you to keep our family together, to keep me with you,” Cas says carefully, obtuse in a way Dean doesn’t think is deliberate but that still drives him fucking crazy. Dean’s laugh sounds harsh and a little hysterical in his own ears, as sharp as a gunshot. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t think you do know, Cas. For once, I don’t think you get it at all, because what I’m telling you is that while Sam was trying to let me know we were the last men standing on a dead planet, I was sitting in that basement, already knowing it. The world was already empty for me, because you weren’t in it anymore.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That’s the moment, Dean thinks, when Cas finally, finally starts to get what’s probably been obvious to every single person who’s ever spent two minutes in the same room with them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t . . .” Cas sounds like his voice is coming from very far away, and Dean turns to look at him and sees a look on his face that is brand new. “What does that mean, Dean?” Dean doesn’t avoid the question, exactly, but he circles the edges of it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We’ve been living in this house for a year, both of us thinking I can’t give you what you want from me. But I think . . . I think what you mean by that is that I don’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>want</span>
  </em>
  <span> to, and what I mean by it doesn’t have anything to do with wanting. I don’t want things, Cas. Not</span>
  <em>
    <span> real</span>
  </em>
  <span> things. Not ever. Me wanting shit has never ended any way but bloody.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Dean,” Cas starts to interrupt, but Dean just plows on through, all inertia and the sudden, desperate need to make him understand. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I wanted Sam to be safe, and then we spent 30 years putting targets on our backs every time we took a breath. I wanted all the people I ever cared about to just be there, in my life, and they died or left or broke my heart, over and over and over again. I wanted to make my own choices, and then I found out my whole damn life was down in stone the second Chuck flipped on the lights. Wanting anything else felt like ringing the dinner bell for the universe to come and chew up the life we’d cobbled together from the ashes of the rest of it. It felt like tempting fate.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“There </span>
  <em>
    <span>is</span>
  </em>
  <span> no fate, anymore,” Cas reminds him, so gently. “And if it doesn’t exist, you can’t tempt it. It can’t ruin the life we’ve built here.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“But </span>
  <em>
    <span>I </span>
  </em>
  <span>could.” It is Dean’s deepest and most painful truth, and he feels it tear him up inside as he drags it out from under a lifetime of screw-ups. “You said a lot of stuff that day; stuff about me, about the kind of man I am. And at first, I couldn’t make it fit right, in my head. It sounded like you were talking about a stranger. But you’ve always been smarter than me, Cas, and even when I couldn’t put my faith in anything else, I could always put it in you. If you believed it, it had to be true. Maybe I was all of the things you said. But caring about people . . . for me, that always looked like snuffing ghosts and putting down monsters, making deals with demons and trying to keep Death from the door. And then I’d leave ‘em smilin’ and put as much distance between me and them as I could, before real life could make an entrance and they realized I was no good at it, that I was just a high school dropout with a great car and a metric fuck-ton of anger issues and too many guns. I’ve never been any good at loving people like a normal person, in a way that doesn’t mean dying or killing to keep them safe. The quiet way people do when the world ain’t ending.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No one ever showed you how,” Cas murmurs quietly. “But that doesn’t mean you weren’t any good at it. You are, every day. You cook for your brother and Eileen, you call Claire every week, you reshingled Donna’s roof after the hail storm last winter and stop to help strangers when their cars are broken down on the side of the road. You talk to Miracle like he’s a person. You’re putting this house to rights with your own hands. You bring me seeds for the garden when you’ve been to the hardware store. I have never known another human being who knows so instinctively how to care for other people. In all the ways, even the quiet ones.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t know about all that,” Dean says gruffly, embarrassment and pleasure warring for ownership of the flush he feels high on his cheeks. “But I realized today: maybe it doesn’t  matter like I thought it did, whether I’m any good at it or not. Maybe, just this one time, this one thing, it’s too solid for even me to screw it up.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Cas is looking at him like he is almost afraid of him, like what he’s saying is some sort of beautiful lie that is about to be snatched away at any moment. Dean is more sure than ever, seeing him suspended on the edge of believing he can have this, that this is something they can do. That Dean can choose it, and then keep on choosing it. Can maybe even keep it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Why today, Dean?” Cas asks finally. “What’s different about today?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Nothing,” Dean murmurs, almost a sigh. “Nothing is different, and that’s exactly the fucking point, Cas. I woke up in the same bed I do every morning. I knew there would be coffee already made in the kitchen, and that the dog would have already eaten. I knew you’d come back from your run looking like you always do and that I’d want to put my hands all over you, like </span>
  <em>
    <span>I</span>
  </em>
  <span> always do.” Cas makes a noise like he’d taken an unexpected blow to the sternum: shocked and breathless and a little pained. Dean feels a little like he’s burning up on the inside, but he doesn’t back down. “For lots of reasons, but mostly just to make sure you’re here and whole. That any of this is real.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s real,” Cas insists immediately. “You and I . . . we have always been real, Dean.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I believe it, when you say it,” Dean confesses. “I believe it when I come home from work and find you in the garden, talking to the plants like a lunatic. And then today, when you were telling me about that kid, you looked so sad, and I </span>
  <em>
    <span>hated</span>
  </em>
  <span> it, Cas. I hated it like I used to hate every angel and demon and monster in between who tried to use me like a weapon in their war, like I used to hate Chuck yanking our chain and the world for taking away everything I tried to keep. And then we talked about it some, just talked and shared a beer, and you didn’t look sad anymore. You looked . . . peaceful, better. You looked like I made you that way.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You did,” Cas says quietly. “You always do.” He lifts his hand and then hesitates, watching Dean’s face to see if he’s going to bolt. When Dean just looks back at him placidly, Cas carefully sets his fingers over Dean’s wrist, lets his thumb brush the knob of bone at the base of his hand. Dean doesn’t try to hide the shiver that runs through him at the innocuous touch, and he drinks up the way Cas’s pupils blow wide like a man dying of thirst in the desert. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And then I thought . . .” Dean says slowly, shifting his arm until he is able to slide his fingers through Cas’ like a key into a lock. “I thought that if all of this was real, maybe the rest of it could be, too. It never seemed possible, before, but none of this seemed possible either. If we can have this life, if we can spend our weekends putting our house back together and have Friday dinners with our family and go to work and come home to each other . . . then we’re already doing it, aren’t we?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Most of it,” Cas agrees, the hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth, and Dean feels a thrill up his spine, half terror and half longing. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The quiet parts,” Dean clarifies. “The parts I didn’t think I’d be any good at, the parts I couldn’t have - “ He chokes a little on the next words, and kind of can’t believe he’s saying them at all. “The parts I couldn’t have with anyone else, Cas. Anyone but you. We already have them, don’t we?” Cas’s eyes have gone huge and liquid, like pools of dark water, and Dean really hopes he isn’t about to start crying because Dean feels about 3 seconds away from it himself, and they can’t sit on their front porch holding hands and crying about their feelings. That’s too much, even for a night as strange as this one. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Yes</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Dean,” Cas breathes emphatically, squeezing their fingers together like a lifeline. “We have them.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Then, maybe . . . maybe we can have the rest of it, too.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And you want . . .” Cas pauses, looks up at Dean through his lashes inquisitively. “The rest of it.” It isn’t phrased like a question, doesn’t even sound like one, but it is. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dean takes a deep breath, and thinks about all the things he put in a box in his mind back in 2009, and all the things that have happened since. He thinks about what it felt like to watch Sam curl a careless arm around Eileen’s shoulders at the county courthouse on the day they got married, out in the world where anyone could see, like he was proud, like it never even occurred to him not to show it. He thinks about Cas coming in from his morning run with sweat beading on his skin, and waking up alone in his bed every day, and the way he can feel his pulse beating against all the places Cas is touching him right now: shoulder, knee, the electric contact of their palms clasped together. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah,” Dean says finally, and considering how long he’s avoided saying it and how much he’s admitting when he does, he expected it to be hard to get out, but it isn’t. It feels simple. Easy. “Yeah, I want the rest of it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Cas studies him in silence for a few minutes, and Dean listens to the cicadas screaming in the trees (because of-fucking-course they are) and waits him out. Cas did a lot of waiting for him, after all. Dean can be patient, too. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“In case it bears repeating,” Cas says finally, almost conversationally, “you are the love of my very long life. From the moment I saw you, shining in the Pit, I knew I would be changed, forever. You were the brightest thing in any world.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fuck, Cas,” Dean wheezes, feeling gut punched. “You can’t just say shit like that.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I think I can, now,” Cas disagrees with a smile. “I think you’re finally ready to hear it.” He lifts his free hand up and slides it along Dean’s cheek, ruffling his beard and sending sparks through Dean’s skin like shooting stars. Cas no longer looks uncertain, and he shifts forward, bumping his knobby knees against Dean’s thigh. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“For what it’s worth, I was truly happy, just to love you. This past year was more than I ever dared hope for, and I would have lived the rest of my days with you that way, content with the life we’ve built, exactly as it has been.” His fingers hook against the jut of Dean’s jawbone suddenly, and Cas’ eyes have gone dark with want and intent. “But I think . . . I think I can do this now, too.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dean opens his mouth to agree, to beg, maybe, but he doesn’t have to, because Cas’ lips are suddenly against his. Dean doesn’t know what he was expecting from this first kiss; maybe a dam bursting, 12 years and more suffering than any two people should have to endure built up into something frenzied and violent like their lives had once been and never would be again. It isn’t like that, though. It’s so scorchingly hot Dean is going to kick himself for the rest of his life for not doing it sooner, but it is reverent, and sure, and unlike any touch Dean has ever known. For a few seconds that stretch like taffy, sweet and pulling, Dean lets himself be kissed by the man he loved even before he was ready to, and then he lifts one hand up to touch Cas’s throat. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s like a bomb going off. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Cas makes a keening, nearly-animal noise, and Dean feels like that time he stood too close to a lit Roman Candle: flash-bang heat and ringing in his ears, and the fight-fuck-flight of adreneline flooding his veins. His hand at Cas’ neck pulls him forward into Dean’s body without any conscious decision on his part, and he yanks his fingers out of Cas’ grip to tangle them up in the hem of his t-shirt where it skims his lower back. Cas uses his newly-freed hand to balance himself against the wooden armrest at Dean’s back as he surges up and kisses him like the world is ending, like it’s the last good thing either one of them will ever feel. Somehow, Cas’s knees end up on either side of Dean’s hips and Dean’s neck is strained up to get closer to Cas’ mouth, and Dean thinks that if he dies of a heart attack before they get to the good part he is totally going to ground Jack when he finally makes it up to Heaven. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Cas’ tongue slides into Dean’s mouth and his weight comes down on Dean’s lap and it’s so blindingly, blisteringly good. The seam of his jeans presses tight against Dean’s straining dick and Cas makes that broken, feral noise again, and just before Dean’s brain goes completely offline, he has a sudden thought. He desperately wrenches his lips away from Cas’ and gets a hand on his chest to stop him from chasing after them, breathing like he’s just run a mile over hard country. Cas gets the same bitchy look on his face that he had that afternoon when Dean had stolen beer back, but this time his mouth is wet and red and his hair looks like sex itself, and Dean almost loses the thread again. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Wait,” Dean gasps as Cas starts to push forward, pressing that broad chest against Dean’s fingers like an inevitability. Cas stops immediately, and Dean feels a rush of fondness for him that would bring him to his knees if he weren’t already pinned beneath Cas’ weight. Before he can get the wrong idea, Dean let’s his hand skim up from Cas’ neck and thread into his hair, almost petting, if petting where a thing Dean did to people and not to dogs. Cas’ eyes drift closed almost sadly as he leans into the touch, and Dean’s heart feels like molten metal in his chest. “Just wait, sweetheart,” he says, softer, soothing, and Cas’ eyes fly open and his breath catches in his chest. Dean files that away for later. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I didn’t get to say it back,” Dean explains slowly. Cas’ expression shifts, the look of someone standing on a precipice in a strong wind. “You told me you loved me once, and I didn’t get to say it back then either, and then you </span>
  <em>
    <span>died,</span>
  </em>
  <span> Cas.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I didn’t want to,” Cas whispers desperately. He starts to pull himself away from Dean and that is just </span>
  <em>
    <span>not on</span>
  </em>
  <span>, so Dean tightens his grip on the back of Cas’ shirt, knuckles digging into the ridges of his spine, and holds him more firmly against his chest. Cas sags into the movement, and then lets his head fall forward until their foreheads touch. “I never want to be anywhere you aren’t.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Never again,” Dean whispers fiercely, nudging his nose against the stubble on Cas’ cheek. “But just in case, I’m going to say it back, this time. Ok?” Cas trembles in his arms, and Dean holds him while he does it, the way he thinks he’s probably always wanted to. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ok, Dean.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dean tilts Cas’ chin up until he opens his eyes, meets his gaze. Cas looks flushed and tousled and a little broken open, and so beautiful it hurts to look at him, like staring into the sun. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I love you,” Dean says, firmly, an oath if he’s ever made one, and if a single tear escapes Cas’ eye, Dean is willing to make an exception to the “no crying on the couch about our feelings'' rule just this once. He rubs his thumb over the shining trail on his cheek, wipes it away like it had never been. “You’re it for me, and I’m done pretendin’ you’re not. You’re the only thing I’ve ever gotten to choose, and if the world wants to take it away from me, let ‘em fuckin’ try.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I would never let that happen,” Cas swears, letting his hands come up to either side of Dean’s face, cradling his head like something precious. “I would tear the fabric of reality apart, to get back to you. I have before.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You won’t have to again, Cas,” Dean tells him solemnly, and it suddenly occurs to him that they might be making some promises here of the “I do” variety, and finds it doesn’t scare him like it maybe should. “You ain’t going anywhere I can’t follow. ‘Til the end, and after.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Until the end and after,” Cas echoes, and that’s about all the talking Dean can stand, so he leans up to press their mouths together again, like they always should be. Cas tastes like salt water and the beer they had with dinner, and he smells like Dean’s shampoo and the fabric softener they got on sale last time they made a run into town. Cas’ hands feel broad and rough against the tender skin of Dean’s throat, and Dean lets his own fingers unknot from their desperate grip on Cas’ shirt and slip beneath the hem, skimming the smooth, warm planes of his back. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Eventually, Dean’s dick has joined the party again, and Cas is making little, unconscious rocking motions with his hips that are going to be the death of him, probably, but as he shifts to get more friction, he realizes he can’t get any good leverage with one thigh wedged against the back of the loveseat and the other leg splayed out on the planks of their front porch. He suddenly remembers that they are a pair of grown men in their forties with bad joints and at least two perfectly good beds upstairs, and there is no excuse to be groping the mostly-virgin man he loves on shitty outdoor furniture where anybody who happens to drive by might catch an eyeful. Dean nudges their mouths apart to breathe, and then shocks  himself with the depth of the groan that reverberates in his chest when Cas’ lips simply move down to his throat instead, latching onto the pulse point below his jaw that has always really, </span>
  <em>
    <span>really</span>
  </em>
  <span> worked for him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Whoa, hold up a second,” Dean hears himself yelp, embarrassingly, and again, Cas stops at once, leaning back to rest his weight on Dean’s thighs which, wow, is really working for him too. It’s possible that maybe everything works for him, when it’s Cas. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes?” Cas prompts, weirdly polite but maybe a little bit frustrated, this time. Dean admires Cas’ iron-willed self-control in every context, including this one, but he thinks it might be fun to spend a lazy afternoon in the future seeing how far he can push until it breaks.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“As good as you look, sittin’ up there on my lap like that,” Dean drawls, just to see the blush rise in Cas’ cheeks, “I’m gonna want a little more privacy for this next part.” Dean curls his hands on Cas’ hips, letting his thumbs ride along the skin above the waist of his jeans, and he gets to watch the flush on Cas’ face spill down along his neck and disappear beneath his collar. Dean wonders how far down it goes, and feels a little flushed himself. He expects that blush to be followed by some extremely charming stuttering on Cas’ part, but instead what he gets is a smirk and the sensation of big hands knotting in the lapels of his flannel shirt as Cas leans in close to his ear. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Are you saying you want to take me to bed, Dean?” Cas asks, his voice rumbling over the bass notes like sin itself, and yeah, ok, Dean is </span>
  <em>
    <span>so</span>
  </em>
  <span> not straight. It was probably implied, what with the dude he just professed his undying love to grinding an erection into his, but it really hits him between the eyes now, with Cas’ strong thighs beneath his hands and the scrape of stubble over his cheek as Cas nuzzles the hinge of his jaw. And maybe putting it into words like that for the first time, even in his own head, would warrant a moment to pause and reflect in other circumstances, but he’s got better things to do right now. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, Cas,” Dean murmurs, running his lips over Cas’ beloved face, placing a kiss and then a quick nip on his ear and feeling him shudder. “I love you, and I want to take you to bed.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Cas is no longer the celestial soldier he had been for millennia, when he could blink his way to distant galaxies and throw cars across a city block like lifting a bag of groceries, but his terribly human shoulders are broad and strong, and he runs his way around the outskirts of a small midwestern town five mornings a week just for fun. It probably shouldn’t surprise Dean, then, how quickly he swings himself up off the bench and hauls Dean to his feet like he weighs nothing at all, but it does. Only slightly less surprising is how unbearably hot Dean finds it, to feel the strength of him like that, to know he’ll have all that coiled power beneath his hands as soon as he can get him up the stairs. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Getting themselves to a bedroom turns out to be a bit of a trick, because Dean has never had the best impulse control and Cas is nothing if not willing to be crowded up against various vertical surfaces while Dean finds new places to touch that make him writhe and squirm and pant Dean’s name into the air like a prayer. They nearly break their necks when Dean trips Cas backwards over the stairs at the top of the landing, half a second from tumbling to the floor before Cas catches them on the creaky old dresser Dean uses to stash extra towels and linens and his second-favorite shotgun. Cas laughs as he steadies Dean with a hand on his shoulder, </span>
  <em>
    <span>that</span>
  </em>
  <span> shoulder, flashing the gummy smile Dean had almost never seen on him before Jack plucked him out of the Empty, and Dean looks into his grinning face and thinks he’s probably the luckiest son of a bitch who ever lived. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Cas’ laughter fades as he takes in whatever he sees in Dean’s expression, and he reaches up to run a thumb over Dean’s brow. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What are you thinking about, right now?” Cas wonders, washed silver by the moonlight from the hall window. Dean lets himself nuzzle against Cas’ hand as he moves to press their bodies together from knee to chest, a long, unbroken line of heat. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You,” Dean tells him honestly. Cas surges forward and kisses him like he can’t bear to do anything else, and then they’re off again. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>By the time they stumble into Dean’s room, whatever nerves Dean might have felt about having another man in his bed have been burned away with how much he </span>
  <em>
    <span>wants</span>
  </em>
  <span>. When Cas gives him a shove and he lands sprawled on his back across the memory foam, the only thing he’s afraid of is that there will never be enough time to do all the things he’s imagining, no matter how many years they have left. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Cas stands looking down at him for long enough that if Dean hadn’t spent a dozen years acclimating to his weirdo staring it would probably get uncomfortable. The waiting is worth it, though, because when Cas has finally stared his fill, the first thing he does is grab the hem of his own t-shirt and pull it slowly over his head. Dean props himself up on his elbows to get a better view. He doesn’t think he’s going to want to miss this. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dean lets his gaze rove over Cas’ broad chest, the tattoo at his hip and the way muscle shifts beneath his skin. Cas’ has tan lines at his neck and cutting across his biceps, from his morning runs and from long afternoons in the garden, and when Dean’s eyes snag on the trail of dark hair leading downward from his navel, his first instinct is to flinch away before he remembers he’s allowed to look. He does look, and because he’s looking he sees the way Cas heaves in a breath like he’s drowning, the way his cock twitches in his jeans as he realizes what Dean is looking at. Dean finally drags his gaze back up to Cas’ blown-black eyes, and feels an old smile he hasn’t used in years spread across his face, the kind of smile that used to convince sweet girls to follow him into the backseat of the Impala, </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“See somethin’ you like?” Dean is sort of shocked by his own boldness, by how natural it feels to let his legs fall open a little in invitation. The noise that comes out of Cas’ throat is like nothing so much as a growl. He is spread out on top of Dean in an instant, and Dean lets himself fall back on the bed so he can run his hands over all that exposed skin, warm and real beneath his fingertips. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You have no idea,” Cas mumbles while he sucks a bruise into the vulnerable juncture of Dean’s neck and shoulder, “No idea what you look like, like this. Temptation incarnate. The very essence of sin.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s some pretty big talk, Cas,” Dean gasps, when he can breathe around the supernova heat in his chest. “You got the moves to back it up?” Cas sinks his teeth into the mark he’s been coaxing out of Dean’s skin, and Dean stops thinking for a while. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When his brain comes back online, Cas’ mouth has abandoned his neck for more southern geographies, and Cas is pressing biting kisses into the midline of Dean’s abs as he inches the shirts up his torso. Dean spent 30 years on the rack before he broke, but the sight of Cas’ naked chest between his legs, shoving them open, snaps something in his mind in 10 seconds flat. Before he knows what he’s doing, Dean has flipped them over, so that Cas is staring up at him from his back and Dean is straddling the wide expanse of his ribs. Dean yanks his shirts over his head artlessly, mostly to get them out of the way, and Cas’ thumbs spasm where they rest in the tender crease of Dean’s thighs. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dean curves himself forward, letting his lips hover a scant inch away from Cas’ gasping mouth, and he has held the First Blade in his bloody hands and had God begging for death at his feet, but he has never felt more powerful. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What d’you want, sweetheart?” Dean breathes into the space between them, and Cas’ eyes slam shut like they will be burnt out if he looks at Dean for another moment. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Everything,” he rasps. “All of you. Anything you’re willing to give.” His eyes slit open and lock on Dean’s, black holes with a faint ring of holy blue fire at their edges. “There is nothing I don’t want from you, Dean Winchester. I would have you in every way there is.” Dean pants down at him for a moment, trying to sort through the love and lust and endless possibilities of that statement to find the thing he most wants to make happen in the next 10 minutes. Cas just looks back up at him, pliant and wanting and endlessly patient, and suddenly all Dean can think about is making him feel so good that he will never miss the angelic eternity he gave up for a falling-down house in Kansas and a retired hunter who can’t remember to take out the trash on Tuesday mornings no matter how many times he’s reminded. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dean presses a single, soft kiss to Cas’ wet, red mouth, and then slithers down the bed. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Dean</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” The name sounds like a plea and a prayer on Cas’ tongue, but not like a protest, so Dean doesn’t still his hands where he has them twisted in Cas’ button fly. He presses his nose along the bulge of Cas’ dick where it strains against the seam of his Levi’s, breathes in the sea-salt-spray scent of him, and the second the last button pops free, he pulls down Cas’ jeans and boxers in one swift movement before he can lose his nerve. Cas helps him as best he can, kicking the tangled knot of fabric off the bed when it catches on his left ankle. Dean seizes that foot before it can fall back to the bed and kisses the delicate arch of it, because he’s afraid that if he turns to look at Cas sprawled loose-limbed and bare across his sheets, he’ll actually go up in flames. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He focuses only on the bits of Cas directly in front of his face, trailing his lips up the smooth line of his shin, the vulnerable bend of his knee, the ropes of muscle that lash across his thigh. By the time he reaches the moon-pale skin stretched across the jut of a hip bone, Dean is so lost in the minutiae of Cas’ body that he’s almost startled to feel the blood-hot line of his cock against his cheek. He finally lifts his gaze, and sees Cas looking down at him desperately, his hands fisted in the sheets at his sides. He looks utterly wrecked already, like he could come from this alone, from Dean’s blunt nails scratching lightly through the hair on his belly and his willing mouth so close to the place Cas must really want it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t really know what the hell I’m doin,’ Cas,” Dean warns him gruffly. “Just . . . tell me if I screw it up.” Cas keens low in his throat and lets his head fall back on the bed, clearly beyond speech, and Dean mans the fuck up and sucks Cas’ dick into his mouth. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Instantly, the taste of him floods across Dean’s tongue, and he hears himself moan like it is happening from very far away. This is something about Cas he never knew, something no one else will ever experience, and Dean feels selfish and greedy and unashamed. He’s a little shocked by how much he wants to </span>
  <em>
    <span>own</span>
  </em>
  <span> this part of Cas, to covet it in the secret parts of himself, where it will be safe. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It takes Dean a few bobs of his head to get a handle on the mechanics of it from this side of things, but once he does, he is fascinated by it. Cas makes hitching, blissed-out noises above him, and his senses are all full of nothing but this. His own arousal, which had felt all-consuming a few minutes ago, seems like something warm and wonderful but entirely separate from himself. There is only enough room in his brain now for the head of Cas’ dick bumping his soft palate, the throb of a vein as he runs his tongue along its length, the aborted little thrusts Cas is trying so hard to rein in beneath the weight of Dean’s hand on his hip. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Dean</span>
  </em>
  <span>, so good.” Cas manages to string together a few coherent words amongst the babble of formless praise that’s been spilling from his lips, and Dean redoubles his efforts, suddenly wanting Cas’ orgasm like he has never wanted anything before in his life. He likes this, Dean realizes all at once, grinding his own dick into the mattress to relieve some of the sudden, blinding pressure. He likes it in a way that has almost nothing to do with the fact that it’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>Cas</span>
  </em>
  <span> falling apart in his mouth, likes the ache in his wide-open jaw and how much strength he has to exert to keep the slim hips beneath his hands pinned to the bed. He likes it for its own sake, and the enormity of this discovery almost pushes him over the edge all on its own. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Cas is swelling and throbbing on Dean’s tongue, and his head is thrashing back and forth like he is insensate with the pleasure of it, but he seems stuck on a ledge, unable or unwilling  to jump. Dean finally pulls off, wrapping a fist around the slick length of Cas’ cock and letting it slide through the mess of spit and precome that has pooled at the base. Cas’ eyes blink open in a daze, and when he raises his head to look down the length of his body, Dean lowers his mouth to breathe hotly over his balls, like a promise. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Cas lets out a strangled noise like he couldn’t hold it back if he tried, and raises a tentative hand up to Dean’s face, tracing the swollen line of his mouth. Dean wonders vaguely what he looks like, and feels heat suffuse his cheeks as he imagines what Cas sees, looking down at Dean stretched out between his thighs. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“C’mon, sweetheart,” Dean coaxes, and his voice sounds like he swallowed a handful of gravel. He turns his face against Cas’ length, lets his beard drag along thin skin to hear the groan it tears out of Cas’ heaving chest. “Give it up for me, mm?” Cas sobs out his name as Dean guides the hand that had been sweetly stroking his face into his hair and then sinks his mouth back down on Cas’ straining dick. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It doesn’t take long after that, Cas fisting his fingers against Dean’s scalp but never pulling, never forcing him down. Dean thinks about all the years they could have had this, how much easier it might have been to endure the trials and tribulations of his fucked-up life if he could have been as sure of Cas’ place in it as he is in this moment, and pours those feelings into bringing Cas off in the quiet confines of the bed he sleeps in every night. When Cas finally comes, his body forms a long, graceful curve and he makes no noise at all, and Dean swallows him down. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Eventually, Cas falls back boneless against the sheets, and Dean lets his cock slip from his mouth. He doesn’t pull away though, keeping Cas’ skin against his wherever he can, murmuring nonsense into the concave slope of his belly while Cas slides a hand weakly through his hair. The urgency of his own dick, still trapped in his jeans even though Dean just had his top-ten sexual highlights blown out of the fucking water, starts to make itself known again, and he begins to make his way up Cas’ body, nuzzling his face against his chest in a way he will deny to his deathbed if Cas ever tries to bring it up again. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When he reaches Cas’ lips, Cas seems to come back from wherever that epic first-time blowjob sent him, and he yanks Dean into a kiss that feels like a benediction. Cas licks aggressively into the nooks and crannies of his mouth, and it takes Dean maybe longer than it should to realize Cas is seeking out the taste of himself on Dean’s tongue. Dean feels lust arc like lightning through his body, and he shoves his straining cock against Cas’ hip through the rough denim of his jeans.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fuck, Cas,” Dean tries to say into the scorching-damp press of their kiss. “Touch me, sweetheart, god, </span>
  <em>
    <span>please</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” Cas murmurs soothing noises at him, and then pulls away enough to tip him onto his back and drag one hand down to Dean’s fly. Between the two of them, they manage to shove Dean’s clothing down to mid thigh, and that’s just going to have be good enough, because Cas has clearly reached the end of his seemingly infinite patience. His fingers are rough and calloused and too dry when they wrap around  the burning length of Dean’s cock, and if it hurts a little, that’s ok too, because Dean doesn’t ever want to forget the first time he’s touched this way by someone who loves him, all of him, down to his bones. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I have seen every beautiful thing brought forth onto the earth since the dawn of creation, every small kindness and every perfect flower and every temple built by the hands of the faithful,” Cas murmurs into his ear as he drops his body down to half-cover Dean’s, their faces pressed close like two sides of a coin. “I have learned every language ever spoken in the tongues of men and angels, listened to every note of music, heard children laughing in every age of this world. And none of it, Dean, none of it compares to you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dean hears himself sob as though the sound is coming from someone else, and his entire existence narrows down to Cas’ hand moving over his dick and his breath against his cheek, the dark-hot rumble of his voice sparkling like a livewire under his skin. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Do you think anyone else, since your first ancestor walked the fields of this wonderful, imperfect planet, has loved like this? Has known another person as I know you, as we know each other? I flew through the endless blood and sulfur of Hell, following your soul like a beacon, and rebuilt your body cell by cell. You watched me fall from grace, again and again, and instead of turning from me in my weakness, gave me a safe place to land, every time. We defied every god who ever existed to save each other, to save this world, and all of it has led to the life we have built together, to this moment.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’d do it again, Cas,” Dean gasps, blinded by tears and ecstasy and the impossible brightness of the man beside him. “I’d do it, all of it, again, to be here. With you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You will never have to,” Cas whispers as he skims his lips to Dean’s mouth. “We have done our fighting. We have won. Heaven, Hell, the Darkness, the Empty; they have no claim to us anymore, Dean. You belong to </span>
  <em>
    <span>me</span>
  </em>
  <span>. We belong to each other.” Cas seals their mouths together and tightens his hand on Dean’s cock, and Dean comes and comes and comes, falling over the edge of the world. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Some indeterminate time later, Dean becomes aware that his clothes have been stripped away and he is warm beneath the blankets, and that Cas is curled up against his side, breathing praise into the hollow of his throat. Dean raises a hand up to settle it on the back of his head, turning his face into Cas’ tumbled hair. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I love you,” Dean says softly, like the secret it isn’t anymore. Cas tilts his face into Dean’s skin, burying his nose against the winging ridge of a clavicle. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I know,” Cas replies, and he says it so casually and Dean is already so close to sleep that it takes him a second to catch the reference. He feels a thrill of pure, uncomplicated happiness for perhaps the first time in his entire life. </span>
</p>
<p><span>“</span><em><span>Dude</span></em><span>!” Dean exclaims, ecstatic. “Did you just </span><em><span>Han</span></em> <em><span>Solo</span></em><span> me? That’s </span><em><span>awesome</span></em><span>!”</span></p>
<p>
  <span>“Go to sleep, Dean,” Cas grumbles, indulgent and fond, and Dean is going to, he really is, but he has one more thing he needs to say first. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s why we beat ‘em, ya know,” Dean mutters as his eyes begin to drift closed. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Because of Han Solo?” Dean can’t see the wry smile on Cas’ face but he can feel it, close against his skin, and that is so, so much better. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And Dean knows Cas is joking, but actually that’s pretty much exactly the point he was trying to make. They had been trapped in a chess game of cosmic proportions since before Chuck even blinked them into existence, and every other player on the board thought victory looked like ruling the world. The only advantage Team Free Will had ever had was that no angel or demon or minor diety seemed to realize the truth: beneath all their fates and burdens and roles to play in Chuck’s stupid stories, Dean and Sam and Cas even Jack were really just people, and winning could just be this. Dean had once made Cas spend a quiet Tuesday evening watching Star Wars with him, and because Dean loves Star Wars and Cas loves Dean, Cas had paid attention. Because of that, because that is who they truly are, they </span>
  <em>
    <span>won</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, Cas,” Dean murmurs before succumbing to the warmth of the bed and the steady rhythm of Cas’ breath against his neck. “Because of Han Solo.”</span>
</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <span>Eileen moving into the bunker caused a shift so subtle that Dean didn’t even notice it at first, but it was like a pebble dropped into a river. Time passed, the water flowed just a little differently, and then one day he turned around and they were on a different path entirely. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was like having a window thrown open in a room that had been shut up too long. They started eating breakfast together every morning instead of wandering in and out of the kitchen at intervals, and Dean’s days suddenly began with the smell of toast and eggs, the sound of Sam quietly chuckling at something Eileen said, the sight of Cas sitting wordlessly at the table looking blurry and disgruntled until his third cup of coffee kicked in. After that first evening of Dean’s fucking awesome chili, Friday dinners became a thing they did too, and suddenly weekends meant various combinations of the four of them at the store, at the movies, and eventually, ( to Dean’s deep chagrin) the farmer’s market. It was all so bizarrely mundane, Dean occasionally slipped some holy water into everyone’s beer, just in case. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dean finally ran out of things to fix up on the Impala, and he found his hands itching for something other than a gun or a blade for the first time in his long memory. He spent a week furtively visiting all the auto shops within an easy commute of the bunker, bringing home applications and hiding them away like a teenager with a stash of porno mags. The day he casually announced into his coffee cup that he was starting at the garage the following Monday, Sam actually leapt up from the table and hugged him, and Dean was forced to put itching powder in his boxers the next time he was on laundry duty as payback. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sam stopped talking about going back to school. “That dream belonged to someone else,” he confided to Dean one night over tumblers of whiskey at the map table. “The guy who wanted to be a lawyer died with Jess on that ceiling 15 years ago. We have to stop living in the past, man, and that means looking forward, not back. We get to choose, now. We’re free, even from the people we used to be.”  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, Sammy,” Dean agreed, his voice so hoarse he knocked back the rest of his bourbon to try to burn it away. “So, what’s the person you are now planning to do, if school’s off the table?” Sam smiled, a real, genuine smile with none of the sorrow that had been threaded through his features for the last decade or so. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I was thinking about the library.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Cas stopped bouncing around between every non-profit in the greater tri-county area and started spending 4 days a week at the new youth center. One day, he came home with a badge on a lanyard around his neck instead of a sticker reading “volunteer” over his heart, and that was that. When Dean asked him about why he’d settled there instead of at the food pantry or the literacy league or anywhere else, Cas said, “We were supposed to be their shepherds. I never got the chance before, and it’s not quite the same, but it’s close enough. A new path, but not an unfamiliar one.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A new path, but a familiar one. Yeah, that sounded about right. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A month or so passed this way, and as settled as Dean had started to feel in the rhythms of this oddly domestic situation they had found themselves in, he wasn’t even a little surprised when he walked into the library one afternoon and found Sam sitting at the table as if waiting for him. Dean sat down across from him and met his brother’s eyes evenly. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re moving out.” Dean didn’t even have to ask. He knew. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah.” Sam’s expression was a little pleading, but mostly resolute. “If Eileen is going to take that teaching job at the school for the deaf over in Franklin when the new semester starts, she needs an address for the tax forms that isn’t a secret Cold War-Era bunker. So do I, probably. Also, I should probably start paying taxes.” Sam said the last part like it had genuinely just occurred to him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, I get it, Sammy,” Dean said, running a hand over his face. And he did, really. Sam had a girl now, a fantastic girl, and the kind of life he could have with her belonged in the sun, not buried under three stories of concrete and rooms full of weapons meant to fight monsters that didn’t exist anymore.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“All the apartments we’re looking at are nearby,” Sam continued, as if laying out arguments for protests Dean didn’t even make. “We’ll still see each other all the time. Friday dinners, beers after work. I think Eileen would murder me if I tried to set down roots somewhere so far away that she couldn’t hit up the farmer’s market with Cas anymore. She likes hating the honey lady with him.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Every other time Sam had made moves toward a life that didn’t involve Dean being attached to his hip, Dean had felt a feral kind of panic, some deep instinctual wrongness at the idea of not knowing exactly where his brother was at any given moment. This time, all he felt was a sort of melancholic pride, something that was a tiny part sadness but mostly just relief that the kid he’d raised and the man he’d fought beside was whole and strong and brave enough to seize a chance at happiness when it stumbled into his path. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Imma hold you to that,” Dean said gruffly. “But look . . . You don’t have to convince me this is the right move, man. We saved the world; you should get to live in it. I’m happy for you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Really?” Sam’s smile had gone a little tremulous and wobbly, and Dean really hoped he wasn’t about to cry. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Really.” Dean mustered up a smile from under the thin layer of grief that had settled over him at the prospect of not waking up under the same roof as his brother anymore. “And don’t you worry, I’ll keep the lights on around here. All your dusty old books will be waiting whenever you want to visit.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The smile on Sam’s face dimmed, and for the first time since he walked into the room, Dean felt a thrill of fear. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Dean . . .” Sam leaned forward, and his voice went careful and gentle, like he was trying not to spook him. “I don’t think you should stay here either, man.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What the hell are you talking about?” It came out much harsher than Dean had intended. “I get why you need to spread your wings, but this place is my </span>
  <em>
    <span>home</span>
  </em>
  <span>, dude.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“This place is a mausoleum,” Sam argued, and it might have hurt less if Sam had punched him in the face. “We could salt and burn the whole thing to the ground, and it would still be haunted, for us. Haven’t you felt it? Like we’re standing still here? Everything that’s happened . . . it mattered, it will be with us forever. But we can’t live in it, in all those memories. Staying here would make us ghosts with heartbeats, and ghosts aren’t real. Not anymore.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The fear peeled away like burning paper, and beneath it was something so big he couldn’t see the shape of it at first. He thought it might be relief.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m not sure I’m cut out for civilian life, Sammy,” he said slowly, but it didn’t feel exactly right in his mouth. “Picket fences never felt like anything but prison bars to me.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Dean, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you’re already most of the way there, man. You have a job that doesn’t require you to con drunks at a bar out of their money. You have a dog and a bank account. The cashier at the grocery store knows your name. That’s all civilian life is, really. All let’s left is to do all that in four walls that don’t remind you of everyone who died inside them, and maybe with fewer cursed objects.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dean thought about it for a while, trying to feel out the places where Sam stopped making sense, and discovered he couldn’t find them. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Huh.” He looked up at Sam and found him smiling at him like a proud mother hen. Dean schooled his features into a stern expression and pointed his finger at him. “No fuckin’ picket fences, though.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sam held up his hands in surrender, grinning at him across the table. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ok, so we’re agreed, yeah? You wanna talk to Cas, or should I?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dean’s grip on the situation suddenly spun wildly out of control. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What do you mean, ‘talk to Cas?’”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You know,” Sam shrugged. “Let him know we’re leaving this place in our rearview. We can help him get set up somewhere, get some papers forged for him so he can find something other than the youth center once he gets his feet under him.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Cas likes it at the youth center,” Dean said faintly, his head full of a noise like tires screeching on wet pavement. The idea of Sam moving out had been a soft ache in Dean’s gut, like a bruise nearly healed, but thinking about Cas building a life Dean wasn’t a part of burned like acid in his chest</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“He’ll need to put food on the table somehow, Dean.” Sam’s concerned frown made Dean’s back go up for no reason he could pinpoint. “Man cannot live on good deeds alone.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“He’s done enough,” Dean barked, final. “If he wants to spend his time helping backwoods kids and talking to his plants, he’s earned it. He can live with me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“If anyone cares to know what I think,” Cas said from the stairs, “I would be glad to make my home with you, Dean, wherever that home might be.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dean looked up at Cas, standing on the steps. His face was lined and tired, and he had soil beneath his fingernails and a tear in the knee of his jeans. Dean felt that enormous, shapeless thing rise up inside him again; not relief exactly, but something like it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Cool,” he managed to say around the sudden tightness in his throat. “So that’s settled then.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Cas inclined his head a little, and then tilted it to one side, ever-so-slightly-inhuman still. Like a bird. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Could I have a garden?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A laugh bubbled up out of Dean’s chest, a little shaky but mostly just joyful.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, man. You can have whatever you want.”</span>
</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <span>Dean wakes up to the sound of Cas snoring quietly into his shoulder, his chest rising and falling evenly beneath the arm Dean has flung out across the bed. The angle of the sunlight against the far wall tells him it’s much later than either of them usually sleep in, but he figures they probably earned a rest. He lets himself wallow in the pleasant soreness of his muscles for a moment, and then takes a deep breath. Cas sleeps like the fucking dead now that he’s gone native, so Dean isn’t worried about waking him, but he still moves carefully as he pulls himself back far enough to prop up his body on one elbow, looking down at the man he’d said a lot of really romantic things to last night before sucking his brains out through his dick. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dean studies Cas’ strong jaw and the silver threading through the hair at his temples, the pink patches of beard burn at his neck and scattered across his chest, and waits to see if he’s going to get the urge to bolt. He’s pretty sure he won’t; he’s pretty sure he’s never been more certain about anything in his whole, sad existence than he is about this. Even if he weren’t, rabbiting has never really been his style; Sam may have once been the runaway type, but Dean has never known the mercy of being able to walk away from something before it blows up in his face. Still, just in case, he wants to make sure he gets any fool ideas about panicking over the best and most terrifying thing that’s ever happened to him out of the way before Cas wakes up and has to bear witness to it. Dean never wants to give Cas a reason to doubt him, ever again. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A few minutes pass, and Dean can’t find anything within himself that even resembles fear. He mostly just feels grateful, and at peace, and a little impatient for Cas to wake up so they can have sex again. Satisfied that he isn’t going to do anything monumentally stupid, at least not this morning, Dean rolls over to haul himself upright, and mentally tells his bad knee to go fuck itself, honestly, because nothing is going to put a damper on what feels like a very good day. He writes off the clothes he was wearing last night as “need to be washed, or possibly framed for posterity” and pulls on a pair of boxers and his Dead Guy robe. He stops in the fuck-ugly blue bathroom to brush his teeth, take a piss, and splash water on his face, and then makes his way downstairs in search of caffeine. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Down in the kitchen, Dean puts the coffee on and sets two mugs out on the counter before making his way over to Miracle, who had abandoned his bed when he heard Dean’s footfalls on the tile and is now stretching in a beam of sunlight from the garden. The dog seems a little confused about the change in routine, but as always, deeply pleased to see him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Mornin,' buddy,” Dean says cheerfully as he runs a hand through the silky fur around his ears and reaches for the bag of dog food they keep in the far left cabinet next to the muffin pans. “Hungry? I won’t tell Cas I fed you if you don’t. Maybe today’s the day you finally wrangle that Second Breakfast out of the universe.”  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I heard that,” Cas deadpans from the doorway. Dean glances up, and if he’d thought Cas in the kitchen in the morning sweaty and flushed from a run was a sight for sore eyes, it has nothing on Cas in the kitchen in the morning wearing one of Dean’s old Led Zeppelin t-shirts and the jeans Dean peeled him out of last night, barefoot and sporting some truly epic sex hair. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Think we’re busted, Miracle,” Dean says to the dog, never taking his eyes off Cas. Miracle huffs as if resigned to his fate, and then happily applies himself to his single breakfast anyway. Cas is looking at Dean the way he’s always looked at him, like he is something singular in all the millennia of his experience, and where once it made Dean feel small and scrutinized, now it mostly makes him feel pleasantly buzzed all over. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Cas wanders over to the coffee pot and frowns at it like it has personally disappointed him by not being fully brewed before he got downstairs, and then, just as casually, takes a few more steps to back Dean up against the sink with his hands gripping the counter on either side of Dean’s hips. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That robe,” Cas informs him as he presses a slow, sleepy kiss to the skin beneath Dean’s jaw, “is hideous.” Dean skims a hand up Cas’ bicep, letting his fingers slip under the frayed hem of the t-shirt Dean had carried around in his duffle since 1997. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I make it look good,” Dean murmurs against his temple, tugging Cas closer by one belt loop. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And yet my point still stands.” Cas pulls back far enough to study Dean’s face, and how Dean managed to miss the fact that Cas was stupid in love with him for the better part of a decade is really beyond him. There is nothing different about the expression on Cas’ face right now than there had been at the map table in the bunker or across the bench seat of the Impala or in any faceless motel room they had bickered in over the last 10 years, but all Dean can see in it now is the same bone-deep certainty Dean feels in his own chest when he looks at Cas. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Cas closes the distance between their mouths, and he tastes like sleep and toothpaste. The kiss is sweet and closed-mouthed but still roils like the sea beneath Dean’s skin. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Good morning, Dean.” Cas does not pull away to say it, and Dean feels the words puff across his lips, another brand new thing. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Mornin,’ sweetheart.” Dean nudges his nose alongside Cas,’ feels the shift of air against his cheek as Cas smiles. The coffee maker beeps somewhere to his left, and through the open window above the sink, Dean hears the cicadas buzz and the distant burr of a lawnmower. “Coffee?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“In a minute.” Dean thinks Cas will lean in for another kiss, but instead he ducks his head, presses his brow into the space between Dean’s shoulder and neck. Dean smooths his thumb over the skin of Cas’ arm, closes his hand a little tighter at his hip, but otherwise just stays still and lets Cas lean against him, breathing into his collarbone.  When Cas finally lifts his head, Dean lets the hand on his arm drift up to cup his jaw. Cas turns his face into it and sighs a little, still looking at Dean. Always, looking at Dean. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You are more beautiful today than you have ever been,” Cas tells him solemnly, and Dean will never admit to the shiver of pleasure that rolls through him in the wake of a reflexive burn of embarrassment. “And you will somehow be even more beautiful tomorrow.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Aww, Jeez, Cas,” Dean complains as he nudges him away so he can get to the coffee pot. “Warn a guy before you start saying that shit. I ain’t even had my coffee yet.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Only insults before you’ve been caffeinated.” Cas sounds like he’s smiling.  “I see. And when </span>
  <em>
    <span>am</span>
  </em>
  <span> I allowed compliments?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How ‘bout never?” Dean finally gets his hands around his F.B.I. mug and gulps back two long swallows to buy some time for the pleased flush on his cheeks to abate. When he turns back around, Cas has a look of fond amusement on his face that Dean wants to see there every day for the rest of his life. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I do not accept those terms, but I propose a compromise,” Cas says mildly, giving Dean a blatant once over as he does so that sends heat chasing after the caffeine hitting his veins. Cas crowds into his personal space again. “That mug is very stupid, and I can’t wait to get you back in bed.” Cas pecks his mouth and then moves behind him to pour his own cup of coffee, leaving Dean staring gobsmacked at the place where he’d been standing. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When Dean is able to force his limbs into motion again, Cas is leaning placidly back against the counter by the stove like he didn’t just upend all Dean’s expectations of what this particular morning would be like, like he isn’t so star-fire hot and somehow still kind of super annoying that Dean can barely keep himself from dragging him back upstairs and shutting him up. He contemplates the situation for a minute, and then decides that no ex-wavelength of celestial intent is going to out-flirt Dean Winchester, and goes in for the kill.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Your morning-after etiquette is fucking terrible, and as good as you look in my shirt, all I can think about is ripping it off you,” Dean parries back, and gets to watch Cas’ eyes go dark and hungry over the rim of the coffee mug they bought together at a gas station 3 months ago when they took Baby out for an aimless drive.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We were supposed to go to the farmer’s market this morning,” Cas says slowly, like a question. “We used up all that feta cheese you like in the salad, and I need honey.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, that is </span>
  <em>
    <span>so</span>
  </em>
  <span> not happening,” Dean snorts, dumping his empty mug into the sink and then retreating to the far side of the kitchen so he doesn’t start groping Cas against the counter again. “Finish your coffee, and then I wanna get my mouth on all the parts of you I missed last night.” Dean is still enjoying the look on Cas’ face - a little bewildered and overwhelmed, and a lot turned on - when his phone starts ringing, and he digs it out of the pocket of the Dead Guy robe. Sam’s name and a very unflattering picture of him passed out in an armchair at his and Elieen’s apartment after their post-wedding celebration flash across the screen. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Heya, Sammy,” Dean says when he raises it to his ear. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey, man. Morning sickness is kicking Eileen’s ass, so we decided to skip that book reading in Hastings this afternoon. Thought you might want to get a headstart on tearing up the deck if you aren’t busy.” Dean entertains the thought of having his brother over here, prying rotten boards up in the hot afternoon sun while Dean thinks about all the things he would rather be doing with Cas, and almost sprains something thinking about what a bad idea it is. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sorry, Sammy, me and Cas got plans today. Next weekend though, ok? Beer and pizza on the house.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sure,” Sam agrees easily in his ear while Cas rinses their now-empty mugs out in the sink. “Doing anything fun?” Cas can obviously hear Sam’s part of the conversation in the silence of their sun-bright kitchen, because he snorts in a spectacularly unattractive way and shoots a look over his shoulder at Dean that </span>
  <em>
    <span>sears</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Uh . . .” Dean stalls for a minute, trying to follow the thread of the conversation now that his eyes are drifting down Cas’ back, over the curve of his ass in the jeans that had been on Dean’s bedroom floor this morning. “Yeah. Yeah, somethin’ fun.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Cool. Where you going?” And look, Dean loves his kid brother a lot, loves him so much he almost let all of existence go up in smoke so they could stay together, but he is impossible to get off the fucking phone and Cas has finished with the mugs and is now turned around to face Dean with his cock half hard and a look on his face like he wants to eat Dean alive.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Nowhere. Stayin’ in.” Dean is only half aware of what he’s saying now, because Cas is walking toward him with intent, backing him up into the hall. Sam makes one of his bitchy, inquisitive noises into his ear at the same time Cas’ hand slips inside the Dead Guy robe to rest on the bare skin at the curve of Dean’s waist, and Dean thinks this might be how he dies: a brain aneurysm at 42 brought on by the incredibly mixed signals happening in his head right now. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You and Cas have plans to stay in and do something fun?” Sam summarizes skeptically, not quite a question, because he never did know when to leave well enough alone. Dean is about to bark something rude enough to make Sam hang up in a huff when Cas speaks instead, his mouth close enough to Dean’s that it won’t make any difference to the mic in the phone. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sam, you have 10 seconds to end this call before you hear some things I think both you and your brother would prefer you didn’t.” Dean yelps out a sound of mortified protest that is echoed by Sam’s tinny voice in his ear. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Eww, what the </span>
  <em>
    <span>fuck,</span>
  </em>
  <span> Cas! </span>
  <em>
    <span>Gross.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Goodbye forever,” Sam nearly shouts into the phone before the call drops, but it sounds like he’s laughing underneath all the disgusted squawks. Dean lets the phone fall where it will and then spins them until Cas is crowded up against the wall at the foot of the stairs. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Like that kid didn’t already need about 15,000 years of therapy,” Dean growls as he leans in to lick a stripe down the tendon of Cas’ throat, biting maybe a little too hard at the base of it as payback for just </span>
  <em>
    <span>outing him to his baby brother</span>
  </em>
  <span>. And sure, Sam is an actual, literal genius and he was going to have jumped to exactly the right conclusion about their “staying in and doing something fun” plans in about 2 more seconds if Cas hadn’t gone ahead and spilled the beans, and then he probably would have wanted to make Dean </span>
  <em>
    <span>talk</span>
  </em>
  <span> about it . . . so maybe Dean isn’t really that mad after all. He presses a soothing kiss to the bite mark he’s just left as a kind of apology. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sam is a nearly-40-year old man with a wife and a child on the way, and he is </span>
  <em>
    <span>impossible</span>
  </em>
  <span> to get off the phone,” Cas snaps back irritably, and Dean feels something in his chest go soft and fond to hear his earlier thought echoed back at him, but then Cas’ palms smooth down his flanks and his fingers dip into the waistband of his boxers, and he’s back to feeling horny and a little aggrieved.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Can we </span>
  <em>
    <span>please</span>
  </em>
  <span> stop talking about my little brother while I’m trying to get laid?” Dean pleads against Cas’ panting mouth, half exasperation and half desperation.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Agreed.” </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>They manage to stumble all the way upstairs without tripping over anything mostly because Cas is steering this time, manhandling Dean with an efficiency and confidence that is alarmingly hot. By the time they make it back to the bedroom, he has lost his robe and boxers somewhere along the way and he thinks he’ll have bruises on his hips later, like shadows in the shape of Cas’ hands. When Dean’s legs hit the edge of the mattress, he sits and Cas just follows him down, crawling into his lap like he was born to it. Cas’ arms go around his neck and Dean feels dizzy with it, his closeness and the scent of his hair, the way this is something he can have in the midmorning light on a bed still rumpled from the two of them sleeping curled around each other the night before. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Between slow, dragging kisses, Dean gradually becomes aware of the fact that he is totally naked with Cas fully clothed above him. It’s been an interesting 24 hours in Dean’s life, full of surprises, but he still manages to be shocked by how erotic he finds that. Cas pulls away enough to look into his face, pauses at whatever he sees there, and then shoves him down onto his back.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There is so much unyielding strength coiled behind the movement that Dean probably couldn’t have resisted even if he’d known it was coming, and he is struck all over again by how much he loves Cas, how he wants him for a thousand intangible reasons all tied up in that feeling, but also how he wants the flat planes of his torso, the unyielding muscle of his flexing arms, the roughness of his calloused palms against the places Dean is softest. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What do you want, Dean?” Cas presses his weight down down into Dean’s ribs, sliding his hands up with slow, dragging pressure. When one thumbnail catches on Dean’s nipple inadvertently, Dean makes a noise unlike any he’s ever made before. Cas growls low in his throat and does it again, on purpose. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You,” Dean gasps out, vision swimming. “I want you.”</span>
</p>
<p><span>“You have me,” Cas promises, shifting his hips. His ass rocks back against Dean’s cock through the denim of his jeans and Dean feels like he’s drowning. “You’ve always had me. But . . . you’ve done nothing but give your entire life. To me, to your family, to the world. And you have raged against the powers of the universe to keep the things you have, but you have never tried to take anything else, something just for yourself, never even thought to ask for it. What do </span><em><span>you</span></em> <em><span>want</span></em><span>, Dean?”</span></p>
<p>
  <span>Dean has always thought of himself as pretty selfish, is the thing. When his life was all rock salt and neon and things with maggots for faces trying to kill him every other week, he had never seen the point in denying himself whatever simple pleasures were at hand: burgers, whiskey, money from faceless credit card companies and idiot frat boys in pool halls, women with easy smiles and sad eyes. But looking up at Cas, rumpled and incandescent, kneeling over Dean on a Saturday morning, in the house they have been healing with their own hands, he thinks he understands something now that he didn’t then. There’s a difference between grasping at whatever fleeting comforts made his shitty existence a little more bearable and looking around at the life he’d carved out of the world with bloody fingers - a good, real life - and wanting even more. And neither of those impulses, none of those things, are </span>
  <em>
    <span>bad</span>
  </em>
  <span>. He is allowed to want things. He is allowed to let Cas give them to him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I want to wake up with you in this bed every day,” Dean hears himself rasp. “I want to fix up the barn out back so I have a place to store Baby in the winter, and I want to build you a shed for all your gardening shit. I want every morning to be exactly like this one. I want to keep doing Friday dinners forever, and I want Sam and Eileen to have a hundred kids who never learn to be afraid of the dark. I want to remember the look on your face when I told you I loved you for the rest of my life.” He sits up suddenly, and Cas moves with him like he used to in battle, a counterpoint, keeping him balanced. He leans in close so their mouths are almost touching. “And right now, I really wanna suck your cock again while you’re wearing my shirt.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dean hadn’t really been aware of wanting any of that, actually, before it had come tumbling out of his mouth, but now that it’s out there, he is terrified and elated, and maybe only a little shocked. Cas’ face is too close to his own for Dean to read his expression clearly, but what he can see of it is fierce and lovely and determined. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’ll have it, all of it,” Cas swears, bringing his hands up to Dean’s face. “Anything that it is within my power to give.” Dean kisses him, slow, unhurried, and then carefully maneuvers them around on the bed until Cas is stretched out on his back in a spill of light from the window. Dean sneaks one last kiss in before leaning back on his heels and getting his hands on the fly of Cas’ jeans. Cas looks as stunned as he had the night before, all wide blue eyes and heaving chest, but where Dean had felt overwhelmed and a little reckless with it that first time, now all he feels is a hot curl of anticipation and a bone-deep certainty that this is exactly where he’s supposed to be. He gets his hands on Cas’ fly, suddenly desperate to get this show on the road. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Did you think about this, sweetheart?” Dean murmurs as he inches the denim down Cas’ long, long legs as slowly as he can stand. “Before last night, before I laid you out and put my mouth on you, you ever look at my lips and imagine what I could do with them?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Dean</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” Cas’ hands tighten against the sheets, and Dean smiles up at him from beneath his lashes as the jeans pull free and drop to the floor. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“S’alright, Cas,” he coaxes as he moves back up, wrapping one hand around Cas’ straining dick and nudging him into a kiss. “You can say it. You can say you looked at my pretty mouth and wanted to be the one to ruin it.” Cas’ keens against his lips and bucks into his hand. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How’d it go, in your head?” Dean knows it might a little cruel, drawing it out like this, getting Cas so strung out and desperate, but Dean has never really been a nice person, and he feels drunk on the little hitches of Cas’ hips, the tiny sips of air he keeps sucking into his lungs while he exerts that iron will of his to hold himself together. “Like last night, just me wanting to make you feel good, you all sweet and pliant under my hands? Did you think you’d have to get me all riled up and pissed off until I did it just to prove something, just to make you stop talking for 5 goddamn minutes?” Cas’ eyes are shut tight, like he can’t bear to look at Dean right now or can’t bear to stop looking at whatever’s going on inside his head. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Or maybe . . .did you imagine me on my knees for you, Cas?” And that’s the one, Dean can tell, the thing Cas didn’t want to say aloud, the thing that makes the pretty flush cascade down all the way down his chest like the tide. “That’s it, that’s what you really want. Dean Winchester, the Righteous Man, at your feet with his mouth on your cock.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Fuck</span>
  </em>
  <span>,’ Cas hisses out between gritted teeth, and Dean has never heard that word pass Cas’ lips before and feels it like a blow to the gut, low and needful. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’ve never kneeled for anyone, no god or demon or cosmic being who ever tried to break me.” He drops his lips down to Cas’ ear. “I’d kneel for you.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And Cas’ seemingly-endless self-control finally, finally snaps. He sinks a hand into Dean’s hair and pulls him up into a kiss that’s full of tongue and biting teeth, pushing them both up to sitting without letting their mouths part for a second. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes,” Cas growls into the kiss. “I want you like that. I want you every way, but to see you on your knees because you want to be there, all that beauty and strength and your sinful mouth . . . I would fall again, to have that.” And there’s really nothing Dean can say to that, but Dean has always been able to count on his body when words fail, so he looks up into Cas’ ravenous, covetous eyes and drags Cas with him to the edge of the bed. He takes a deep breath, and then slides to his knees on the floor between Cas’ feet, easiest thing he’s ever done. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I want to be here,” Dean says slowly, pushing his hands up Cas’ thighs, partly like a reinforcement but also like an admission. He tangles his fingers in the hem of the old Zepp shirt and feels a sense of possession burn through him like a wildfire. “And not just because </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span> want it, Cas. Because I like it. Like feeling full of you, like the way it tastes, it smells, the way you sound when I’m taking you apart. I like it, just for me.” Saying it out loud like that makes him feel shivery and somehow more naked that he already is, but it doesn’t feel </span>
  <em>
    <span>wrong</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I like it, too,” Cas breathes, raising a hand to Dean’s face reverently. Dean grins at him and sends him a wink. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Gonna like it a whole lot more in a minute, sweetheart.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Just like last night, the second his tongue touches the smooth crown of Cas’ dick, something inside Dean’s brain lights up, like a distant city at night, suddenly visible over the crest of a hill. He lets his eyes drift closed and just revels for a while in the soft glide of hot flesh along his inner cheek, the rhythmic stroking of Cas’ hands through his hair, the wet, intimate sounds of their bodies moving together. It could break his damn heart, really, to think of how close he was to never having this, to never knowing how it felt to let a lifetime of violence and empty pleasures be crowded out of his head by the warm white light of loving Cas in all the ways he can.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He might lose some time there for a while, because it feels like he’s just barely gotten started when Cas gently pulls him off and leans down to lick the taste of himself out of Dean’s mouth, but Cas is sweating and breathing like he’s just sprinted around Lebanon and Dean is aware of his own dick twitching and slicking precome against his belly like he’s almost there already, like they’ve been at this for hours. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey,” Dean grouses as he leans up to get closer to Cas’ mouth. “I was kinda in the middle of somethin’ there.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I was going to come,” Cas tells him with his usual bluntness in this very unusual circumstance, “and I’m not done with you yet.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You got somewhere else to be?” Dean demands even as he lets Cas drag him back up onto the bed with him. “We’re old but we ain’t dead, Cas. If I can’t get you off more than once today I’m doin’ somethin’ wrong.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“If we never leave this bed again, it will be too soon,” Cas says heatedly as he pushes Dean onto his back in the middle of the mattress and yanks his shirt up over his head. Dean feels a little put out about it for a second before his eyes fasten onto a bruise he sucked into Cas’ collarbone last night, and never mind, shirts are so stupid, Cas should never wear one again. “But I want to be looking into your eyes this time, when you take me there. Of all the things I imagined having with you, that is the one I wanted most.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We can do that,” Dean agrees a little dazedly, turning onto his side to pull Cas against him when he stretches out long lean along the sheets. Dean has never had sex like this in his life, where it careens between blisteringly hot and achingly loving from one second to the next, until they blur together and he can’t tell them apart anymore. He could get used to it. He intends to. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We can do anything,” Cas murmurs into a kiss, wrapping one hand around Dean’s hip and gathering their cocks together with the other. Dean’s brain kind of shorts out as he makes an exploratory thrust into the tight, wet channel Cas is making of his fist. Dean brings his own hand down to join it, and the pressure goes from </span>
  <em>
    <span>fucking fantastic</span>
  </em>
  <span> to </span>
  <em>
    <span>maybe the best thing ever</span>
  </em>
  <span> in an instant. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They move together in silence for a while, kissing mouths and throats and whatever skin they can reach, and Dean is just starting to get to the really good part when a particularly enthusiastic thrust makes Cas lose his grip on Dean’s hip. His hand slides back over Dean’s sweat-slick skin until his palm is cupping the curve of his ass, and his fingers dip down into the cleft between. Dean goes entirely still, his heart rate spiking and something bright and sharp cracking jaggedly in his brain. Cas lifts his head and studies Dean’s face carefully, then moves his fingers with deliberate, experimental intent. A soft cry tears itself out of Dean’s throat, and he feels both like he’s been doused in ice water and like he’s on fucking fire. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Even that, Dean,” Cas whispers against his mouth, tightening his hand against the muscle of Dean’s ass and pulling him open, just a little. Dean is aware he’s making some kind of shivery, breathless noise in the back of his throat but has no idea what it is. “There is nothing you could ask of me that is not already yours, that would make you or me or what we have any less pure. The way I feel about you is the holiest thing I have ever known in all my long existence. To be inside you, to feel you all around me in body the way you are all the other ways that matter, would be an act of worship. Divinity given form.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dean has led a sexually adventurous life and known a lot of very inventive women. He’s had slender, tentative fingers pressed inside him before during particularly intense blowjobs, and he’d mostly found it a little distracting and a lot weird. Even just the dry brush of Cas’ calloused fingertips over his hole, though, feels </span>
  <em>
    <span>orders of fucking magnitude</span>
  </em>
  <span> better than just about any other touch he’s felt in his entire life. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dean must be silent too long, contemplating the enormity of this particular discovery, because Cas drops the subject in every way he can: pressing a soothing kiss against Dean’s cheek, loosening the hand on his ass until it is more like a gentle caress than a firm grip, starting to move again into the warm clutch of their intertwined fists. Dean feels Cas’ love wash over him like an ocean wave, warm and buoyant, and knows Cas will let this go forever if Dean never brings it up again, will never push him for more than he is willing to give. It is the same selfless devotion that led Cas to make a deal for Jack’s life, that allowed him to summon the Empty just by speaking his truth aloud without any hope of reciprocation. It is the most precious part of him. It’s the thing that broke Chuck’s hold on the universe, the thing that made them </span>
  <em>
    <span>free</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Dean wants to lose himself in it, and knows, in an instant, exactly how to make that happen. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Wait,” he gasps. Cas stills immediately, and Dean summons every ounce of courage he has ever possessed and reaches a hand down to grasp Cas’ wrist and push his fingers back to their previous position. A broken noise escapes from his throat and Cas’ eyes go wide. “You can. I . . . I want you to.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Want me to what, Dean?” Cas’ voice is barely more than breath. Dean closes his eyes and shakes his head, feeling lost. “Please. I need to hear you say it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Wanna feel you.” Dean only realizes he has tears on his face because Cas raises the hand that isn’t touching the most secret part of him to wipe them away. “God, love you, so much. Wanna feel you, inside. Want it to be you.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Thankfully, that seems to be enough for Cas, because Dean doesn’t think he is capable of saying anything else. His lips move over Dean’s cheeks, over his eyelids, and he is murmuring  words Dean can’t quite hear above the buzzing in his brain. He finds them comforting all the same. Cas finally sits up and looks down at Dean with ravenous eyes, a hint of a question in the tilt of an eyebrow. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dean gestures toward the nightstand, completely beyond speech at this point. Cas is only away from him for a matter of seconds, and then his lips are back against Dean’s, grounding him to the earth. Dean is vaguely aware of the sound of the cap of the lube snapping open, of Cas trembling just a little as he hitches Dean’s top leg over his hip, and then a slick finger is pressing against Dean’s rim and time goes a little wobbly for a while. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The world narrows down to the pressure of Cas’ fingers moving inside him, the uncompromising solidity of his shoulders under Dean’s hands, the words of praise and adoration spilling from Cas’ lips whenever he isn’t using them to kiss. Dean feels like he is two seconds from shattering into a thousand shards of sparkling glass and also like he has never been more whole and human than he is in this moment. </span>
  <span>“Cas,” Dean gasps into the space between them. “Now. Please. Need you.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You are exquisite,” Cas promises reverently as he tips Dean over onto his back, sliding between his legs. “It is the greatest purpose of my life, to make you so helpless in your pleasure, to be allowed to see you this way. That you would let me, that you would give this to me . . . you really do love me, don’t you?” He says the last part like it is a revelation. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes,” Dean swears, letting his knees tighten around Cas’ hips. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“I love you</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and you love me back. Now c’mon, sweetheart Show me how much. Fuck me.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Cas sinks into him, and it hurts and it is extraordinary and Dean can’t believe he lived his whole life without knowing what it felt like, to be known this way. That first long slide seems to go on forever. When Cas is finally as deeply inside him as it is possible to be, Dean feels the air leave his lungs like a tide going out, like something elemental and irresistible. They stay still for a long moment while Dean adjusts to the stretch and the impossible intimacy, and then Cas finally, finally moves. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I knew you would be like this,” Cas manages to force out between breathless groans. “I knew that this act would break you open, that it would show me your soul again. Your most beautiful dreams were full of peace and rest, but mine . . . mine have always been </span>
  <em>
    <span>this</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Every other thrust, Cas is hitting something inside him that makes Dean light up, a sea of sparks beneath his skin. He has his arms around Cas’ back, his face buried in his neck, his legs hooked behind his knees, his ass clenching around the length of his cock, and somehow still doesn’t feel like he’s touching enough of him. Then, Cas drops his weight to his elbows and Dean’s dick is trapped between their bellies. Dean chokes out a noise that feels like it was ripped from the very depths of him, and suddenly realizes his eyes are closed. He wrenches them open and locks their gazes, because Cas asked him for one thing, and Dean wants to give him everything he asks for. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Come for me, Dean. Let me see you,” Cas whispers, and Dean comes like he never has before in his life, like the heat death of the universe. Cas follows him over with a shout, and his eyes never leave Dean’s face. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Cas collapses on top of him when it’s over. Dean feels like he would spin off the edge of the world without the weight of him pinning him down. Eventually, Cas pulls out and rolls off, and they both make sounds of loss as he does.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dean has always been basically useless in the aftermath, but after Cas has blown his fucking mind for the second time in 12 hours, he is nothing but a pile of limbs that won’t do what he tells them and a flood of endorphins singing through his extremeties. He watches Cas snatch the Zepp shirt from the floor and scrub it over their bodies in a half-assed attempt at clean-up and makes a mental note to chew him out later, when he regains the power of speech. Cas tosses the shirt to back to the floor unconcernedly and then collapses on the bed at his side. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You sure got a mouth on you for someone who ain’t done any of this shit before,” Dean observes eventually as he stares at the ceiling and tries to catch his breath. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’ve been in love with you for a decade and angels don’t sleep,” Cas deadpans from somewhere to his right. “I had a lot of time to think.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dean contemplates that for a minute and then cracks the fuck up. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Are you saying all those times I woke up to you staring at me like a creeper, looking all rumpled and pissed off, you were really just in a snit because you couldn’t get your hands on this sweet ass?” He glances over and gets to see Cas’ face go murderous and sulky in equal parts. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>No</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” Cas growls, which totally means yes. Cas grabs the pillow Dean’s half-leaning on and shoves it under his own head, curling up toward him in a petulant ball. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re real cute when you’re embarrassed, sweetheart,” Dean tells the top of his head, because Dean is kind of a dick. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Shut up. I’m taking a nap, and then I want more coffee.” That last part is clearly an order.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I ain’t your housewife,” Dean protests around a yawn. A nap actually sounds pretty nice. He stretches out an arm and Cas lifts his head enough for Dean to wedge it under the pillow.  “You want coffee, you can make it yourself.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’ll make it,” Cas promises with an air of menace, drowsy and still managing to sound a little like he did when he threatened to throw Dean back in the Pit. He sets his fingers into the valleys between Dean’s ribs, not holding on, but a brush of gentle contact. “After that, I want to try using my mouth on you in the shower.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dean thinks about the cramped, clawfoot tub down the hall that’s too small for either one of them, but certainly too small for both, can’t make the logistics work out in his head, and bumps the bathroom remodel up on the Endless List of Shit That Needs Fixing.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, sounds good,” he agrees placidly. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dean falls asleep with the sun on his face and his hand curled around Cas’ shoulder, the cicadas buzzing in the trees outside. </span>
</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <span>Within a month of declaring their intention to move out, Sam and Eileen had found an apartment and signed a lease, and the sight of boxes sitting half-packed around the bunker lit a fire under Dean’s ass where he had been dragging his feet before. The idea of living in an apartment building, hearing the sounds of other people’s lives being lived all around him at all hours of the day, made Dean itchy under his skin, and besides, Cas had asked for a garden, so Sam and Dean emptied out what was left in the account Charlie had set up for them and split it down the middle. Sam squirreled his half away, making vague noises about theoretical children someday, and Dean called a realtor. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He had Cas suffered through a miserable few weeks touring suburban ranch houses and heavily-latticed old Victorians in tiny town centers. Once, they were even subjected to an excruciating afternoon in a shoddily-constructed condo while their realtor, Elizabeth, yammered on about HOAs and the diversity of the community. Then, one weekend, Dean was out driving aimlessly in the unincorporated part of Smith County and saw a For Sale sign off K-181. Obeying some instinct he didn’t understand, he pulled off onto the gravel drive. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The house looked like one bad storm would finish it off, but there were trees and lots of land, and Dean felt like he could breathe out there, like there was no ceiling on the sky. Clearly no one had been living there for a long while, so Dean wandered around the edges of the property for an hour or so, taking it in. On his way back to the bunker, he called Elizabeth and bulldozed over her dubious objections to put in a lowball offer well below the asking price, and then he called Cas. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The next morning, Baby carried the two of them back to the creaky old house and the 5 acres it sat on, and while Cas wandered out into the overgrown backyard, Dean checked the front door. It swung open under the lightest touch of his hand, and he stepped inside. He walked through the rooms, looking at the peeling wallpaper and the gutted kitchen, and for the first time, felt like he could see himself putting his fingerprints on a place, making it his own. He found a bedroom on the second floor that looked out over the back half of the property, empty except for an inexplicably beautiful old chest that contained nothing but some dry scraps of paper that smelled like lavender. When he went to the windows, he saw Cas standing near the treeline, staring up at the sky. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He felt something tug low in his chest, a lurch that was both painful and not, and made a conscious decision not to think about it at all. Instead, he made his way back downstairs and out onto a back deck that felt unstable under his feet, and then walked onto the grass. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well?” Dean asked when he reached Cas, who was crouching next to a flowerbed choked with weeds. “What do you think?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Cas didn’t answer him for a while, tugging a clump of bull thistle out of the ground by the roots. When it was free, he smoothed the soil over with gentle fingers and then stood up, brushing the dirt off his hands as he went. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I think,” Cas said after a long moment, “that it feels like home. Or maybe, that it feels like it could be. What do </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span> think?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dean smiled. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thank you for coming on this journey with me, y'all! I've been invested in Dean and Cas' relationship for 12 years, and wanted them to have a happier ending than the one they got. They deserved to have the domestic, fluffy endgame I hope I provided them with this fic.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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